The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) largely upheld the sentences handed down by the Higher Regional Court of Thuringia (Oberlandesgericht Thüringen) against four defendants for their membership in the right‑wing extremist combat‑sport group “Knockout 51”. The lower court had convicted the men for belonging to a criminal organisation that carried out violent acts such as dangerous bodily injury, resulting in multi‑year prison terms for most of them and a youth sentence for one. The federal prosecutor had appealed, arguing that the group should be classified as a terrorist organisation rather than merely criminal, but the Bundesgerichtshof agreed with the lower court’s assessment.
According to the Thüringer court, three of the accused founded the group in 2019 in Eisenach. The organisation comprised 10 to 15 members and aimed at physical confrontations and violence against people deemed “hostile” such as police officers, political opponents, and those associated with an “antisocial milieu”. The group’s training was described as preparation for real‑world fights. The defendants were found to have committed a range of offences-often violent and sometimes dangerous-including bodily injury. In two cases, weapons or weapon parts were seized.
When the Bundesgerichtshof’s third criminal chamber re‑examined the verdict, it found no procedural errors. However, some aspects of the appeal were partially successful: for one defendant the possibility of criminal liability for a more serious weapons offence could not be ruled out, and another defendant had received an excessively low youth sentence. Consequently, a different criminal chamber of the Oberlandesgericht Thüringen will now have to reconsider the conviction for one of the accused, while the sentences for two other defendants will be recalculated by the court.
