More than seven and a half years after the serious attack by neo-Nazis on two journalists in Fretterode, Thuringia, in April 2018, the retrial against two neo-Nazis from the circle of Thorsten Heise in Fretterode, Thuringia, begins at the Mühlhausen Regional Court on Monday, December 22, 2025, two days before Christmas. The defendants, Gianluca K. (born B.), then 24 years old, and Nordulf H., then 19, had pursued two freelance journalists by car in April 2018, forced them off the road, and seriously injured them. In September 2022, the Mühlhausen Regional Court sentenced Gianluca K. and Nordulf H. to a one-year suspended prison sentence and 200 hours of community service, respectively, under juvenile criminal law. The victims' representatives had demanded a conviction also for aggravated robbery with significantly higher sentences and, in particular, that the neo-Nazi motives be taken into account when determining the sentence.
“After seven and a half years of delay, a verdict commensurate with the crime can hardly be expected from the Mühlhausen Regional Court,” says co-plaintiff’s attorney Sven Adam. “The Thuringian judiciary must answer the question of whether the protection of press freedom had the necessary priority in this trial. Excessively long trials following attacks on journalists send a disastrous signal,” emphasizes Danica Bensmail, Federal Managing Director of the German Journalists’ Union (dju) within ver.di – also referring to the lenient verdict handed down by the Dresden Regional Court against right-wing extremists who attacked and injured several media representatives and their security detail in Laubegast (Saxony) in November 2022 .
“The protracted criminal proceedings reinforce a culture of impunity for serious neo-Nazi acts of violence,” emphasize the victim support centers within the VBRG (Association of Victim Support Centers in the Federal Republic of Germany). Between 2018 and 2024, these centers registered 295 right-wing extremist attacks – predominantly physical assaults – against journalists in 12 of Germany's 16 federal states alone. “Through orchestrated campaigns by the extreme right against the ‘enemy image of the press,’ journalists and press freedom are in grave danger.”
“The Fretterode trial is a precedent for how the rule of law fails journalists under attack,” says Elena Kountidou, Managing Director of the New German Media Makers. Theresa Lauß, responsible advisor at ezra, the counseling center for victims of right-wing, racist, and antisemitic violence in Thuringia, emphasizes how the appeal proceedings should be viewed in light of other practices at Thuringian courts: “The Fretterode case exemplifies structural problems and the persistent tendency to delay cases at Thuringian courts. Many examples in our daily work as a specialized victim support center demonstrate this.”
While the perpetrators primarily benefit from the lengthy legal proceedings, the victims are denied a thorough investigation and legal closure. This leads to frustration and discouragement. "Those who have experienced right-wing violence need a rule of law they can rely on," says Theresa Lauß.
Background
After the Federal Court of Justice in August 2023 overturned the initial ruling of the Mühlhausen Regional Court's Juvenile Chamber from 2022 as being massively flawed, the retrial will now begin on December 22, 2025, at the Mühlhausen Regional Court following a complaint of undue delay filed by co-plaintiff's attorney Sven Adam (Göttingen). The prosecution accuses the defendants – Nordulf H. and Gianluca K., son and political protégé of neo-Nazi cadre Thorsten Heise – of aggravated assault and robbery. The court has scheduled eight hearings until May 2026. The NSU Watch trial monitoring group will be present.
The defendants have rarely appeared in public at neo-Nazi activities – apparently for tactical reasons related to the trial. Gianluca K., who was sentenced in April 2023 to a 14-month suspended sentence, attracted attention, among other things, at a right-wing rockconcert in Neumünster in the spring of 2023 , during the dispersal of which police officers were attacked.
The neo-Nazi attack on the two journalists in Fretterode and the delayed prosecution were the starting point for the founding of the Code of Protection for Media Professionals initiative by the trade union dju/verdi, the New German Media Makers (NdM), Reporters Without Borders, and the Association of Counseling Centers for Victims of Right-Wing, Racist, and Anti-Semitic Violence (VBRG). Since the Code of Protection was established in 2022, 12 media companies – including the German Press Agency (dpa), Südwestdeutsche Medienholding, DIE ZEIT, SPIEGEL, and Süddeutsche Zeitung – have committed themselves to concrete protective measures for threatened journalists within the framework of the initiative.
Questions regarding the process:
Theresa Lauß: theresa.lauss(at)ezra.de
Co-plaintiff representation: kontakt(at)anwaltskanzlei-adam.de and kontakt(at)anwaltskanzlei-kahlen.de
