On Monday 22 May, the Hamburg Regional Court sentenced 32-year-old Marcel J. up to three years in prison, for approving Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine and possession of weapons, among other things.
As Die Welt reports, according to the representative of the court, the three-year sentence was due mainly to the fact that the accused had already been sentenced to imprisonment in April by the Berlin District Court for assaulting a journalist. For legal reasons, it was necessary to form the so-called “total sentence”.
For the attack, the Berlin court sentenced the man to two years and four months in prison. According to the indictment in the Hamburg court, the 32-year-old man justified the Russian aggressive war against Ukraine on social media, and also called Ukraine a “terrorist state”.
He ran a Telegram channel the name and logo of which were associated with the ultra-nationalist Russian Drugaya Rossiya [Other Russia] party. He was also convicted of violating the Weapons Act for the possession of a prohibited knife.
The individual who was found guilty was expressing support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ideological allies, like the ultranationalist Alexander Dugin. The prosecution stated that the convicted party adheres to the “pro-Russian National Bolshevik” ideologies.
In addition, the convicted individual utilized the “Z” symbol, a Russian military propaganda emblem, the display of which is against German law.
In March, a court in the German city of Wiesbaden fined a man EUR €1,500 for wearing a T-shirt showing a symbol of Russian aggression at work.
