In a prison near the German city of Magdeburg, a prisoner took two staff members hostage on Monday. He was overpowered by the police. On Tuesday morning it became known that the 30-year-old was the far-right Halle killer who wanted to murder a synagogue in 2019.
The hitman Stephan Balliet was injured when the police overpowered him. According to the information, the employees were not injured, but are being treated. The exact background of the crime is still unclear. This includes how exactly the prisoner managed to catch the servants. The hostage-taking prompted a large-scale police action. The officers had taken up heavily armed positions in front of the prison. The state detectives are investigating in the prison.
Halle killer was sentenced to life imprisonment
Halle’s hitman was sentenced to life imprisonment and subsequent preventive detention on December 21, 2020. He is serving his sentence in Burg prison. It is the largest and most modern maximum security prison in Saxony-Anhalt.
Uncooperative prisoner
Balliet is considered an uncooperative and difficult prisoner. In the Whitsun weekend of 2020, he tried to escape from Halle JVA as a defendant in the Halle trial. During a garden walk, he climbed a 10-foot fence and spent five minutes unsupervised looking for a way out of the prison before court officials caught him again.
Assassin wanted to storm synagogue in 2019
On October 9, 2019, the far-right assassin attempted to storm the synagogue in Halle on Yom Kippur, the highest Jewish holiday, and cause a massacre. He threw incendiary bombs and explosives and shot at the entrance door. When he was unable to enter the premises, he killed a 40-year-old passerby in front of the synagogue and a 20-year-old in a nearby kebab shop. He injured other people during the flight.
According to the Ministry of Justice, the prison in Burg, not far from Autobahn 2, has 637 places in closed prisons and 18 places are also reserved for preventive detention.
Source: Krone
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