BERLIN – Nearly one year after a deadly car-ramming incident tore through a Munich labor union gathering, the perpetrator has been formally convicted on multiple counts of murder and sentenced to life behind bars, German judicial sources confirmed Thursday.
Identified only as Farhad N. under Germany’s strict personal privacy regulations that shield the full identities of criminal defendants, the 25-year-old Afghan national was taken into custody at the scene immediately following the February 13, 2025 attack. The violence left two members of the public dead and dozens more with severe, life-altering injuries.
Court documents cited by Germany’s national news agency DPA outline the chilling motive behind the attack: Farhad N. deliberately targeted randomly selected civilians in Germany as a response to ongoing conflict and instability in majority-Muslim nations, and sought to prove his status as a “good Muslim” through the act of violence.
The fatalities of the attack included a 2-year-old girl and her 37-year-old mother. In total, 44 additional people suffered either life-threatening or serious harm in the incident, according to official law enforcement records.
Alongside the two murder convictions, the Munich court found Farhad N. guilty of 23 counts of attempted murder and a slate of other related criminal offenses. In an unusual ruling that deviates from standard German sentencing practices, the court determined that the defendant bears “particularly serious” culpability for the attack. This designation means Farhad N. will not be eligible for the standard conditional release after 15 years of incarceration that typically applies to life sentences in Germany, making it highly likely he will remain in prison for the rest of his life.
The 2025 Munich attack stood out as one in a series of violent incidents linked to immigrant perpetrators over a period of months. The wave of violence pushed immigration policy and national border control to the top of the agenda for Germany’s federal national election campaign, which was scheduled just 10 days after the attack in Munich.