German Court Gives Afghan Migrant Life Sentence for Munich Car-Ramming That Killed Mother and Daughter

A German court on Thursday sentenced an Afghan national to life in prison for a car-ramming attack that killed a mother and her two-year-old daughter and injured dozens of others at a trade union demonstration in Munich.

The Munich court, under Presiding Judge Michael Hoehne, found the man, identified only as Farhad N. under German privacy law, guilty of two counts of murder, 23 counts of attempted murder, and 22 counts of bodily harm, 19 of them serious, according to Agence France-Presse. The court also ruled the crime carried a "particular gravity of guilt," a designation under German law that makes early release far less likely.

The attack happened on February 13, 2025. Farhad N., then 24, drove a Mini Cooper around a police vehicle guarding a 1,400-person march organized by the Verdi trade union and accelerated into the crowd, according to AFP and the South China Morning Post. Breitbart, citing Euronews, reported he threaded the car through police escort trucks with roughly two inches of clearance, a maneuver Judge Hoehne said proved deliberate intent rather than the drowsiness his defense had claimed.

The impact threw a 37-year-old woman and her young daughter about 10 meters, or 33 feet, through the air. Both suffered severe head injuries and died days later. Hoehne described the scene afterward as "a field of nothing but debris, 12 meters wide," and said some survivors "are still suffering today," quoting one victim who said they had lived "one life before the attack and another one after it," according to AFP.

Witnesses said Farhad N. shouted "Allahu akbar" during or after the attack. Breitbart's account, drawing on Die Welt, adds that he was holding a Quran while driving and raised his index finger, a gesture associated with the Islamic declaration of monotheism, as police arrested him. NewsFire, citing Junge Freiheit, reported he had posted Islamist content online beforehand and confessed to acting with an Islamist motive.

Prosecutors told the court the act was, in their words, "aimed at the destruction of human life," and that Farhad N. appeared to believe attacking Germans was religiously justified because of Western involvement in Afghanistan and Gaza. AFP reported he is not believed to have had ties to any organized jihadist group such as the Islamic State. Court-appointed experts found his mental health problems, including what Hoehne called a "fragile sense of self-worth" and a need to project "an idealized image of himself," did not diminish his criminal responsibility. His defense sought a psychiatric commitment instead of a standard sentence; the court rejected that request.

Farhad N. arrived in Germany in 2016 as an unaccompanied minor, saying he was 15, after traveling from Afghanistan through Italy. His asylum application, based on a claimed persecution story, was rejected in September 2017. NewsFire reported that when he challenged the rejection, the Munich Administrative Court ruled in 2020 that his account had been fabricated. Deportation nonetheless never happened, in part because the Taliban's 2021 takeover of Afghanistan complicated removals, and he was granted "toleration" status letting him stay and work legally. He worked in private security and built a following on bodybuilding social media accounts, according to Breitbart.

Court testimony indicated Farhad N. grew more religiously conservative starting in 2024, giving up alcohol and pressuring friends to attend mosque. Hoehne said he had come under the influence of "conservative and anti-Western clerics online" and developed what the judge called "exaggerated religious ideas," blaming the U.S. and other Western countries for Muslim suffering. NewsFire reported he also made death threats against prison staff during pretrial detention, calling them "unbelievers."

The attack landed in the middle of Germany's 2025 election campaign and came one day before the Munich Security Conference, a major gathering of international defense and political figures, intensifying an already heated national argument over migration policy. Then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the attack "terrible" and said perpetrators had to be pursued "with all available judicial means." AfD leader Alice Weidel called for an immediate reversal of immigration policy and asked whether such attacks would keep happening. Friedrich Merz, then the CDU's candidate and now chancellor, pledged consistent enforcement of law and order.

A central question across the political spectrum in Germany concerns why a man whose asylum claim was found fabricated by a court in 2020 was still living freely in the country five years later. The toleration status that kept him in Germany exists because deportations to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan are legally and practically difficult, not because German authorities ignored the fabrication finding. Courts can reject a claim as false while the state still cannot safely execute the removal.

Under German law, a life sentence normally allows parole consideration after 15 years. The court's finding of "particular gravity of guilt" makes that outcome significantly harder to secure, though it doesn't eliminate the possibility outright. Whether Germany's toleration framework for unremovable rejected asylum seekers changes as a result of this case remains an open question for Merz's government.