The violent far-left activists that descended on Hungary in February and brutally beat a number of victims in Budapest are now facing trial in Dresden for charges related to forming a criminal organization.
As Remix News previously reported, the beatings in Budapest involved a group of Antifa thugs armed with hammers and iron bars beating individuals the suspects believed were part of a right-wing demonstration in the area, The vicious attacks caused outrage in Hungary and were widely covered by the national press.
The police reported that the victims were not in attendance at the right-wing demonstration, but were instead merely wearing military-style clothing. A video of one of the victims, who was reportedly on the way to his job at a tobacco store, went viral.
The Hungarian press is reporting that these Antifa activists are suspected of being a part of a militant group accused of terrorizing Germany over the last few years, and German authorities have been slow to act against them. However, that may no longer be the case, and the international incident in Budapest may be fueling Germany’s clampdown on the extremists.
Following the attacks in Budapest, four Germans were immediately arrested by Hungarian police, and they are believed to be a part of the far-left terror group labeled by the German press as the “Hammberbande,” or “Hammer gang” in English. The following month, on March 15, German police raided several locations in two East German cities, Leipzig and Jena, in their search for additional left-wing terrorists they believed to be involved in the Budapest attacks.
One of the leaders of the terror group, 26-year-old Leipzig student Lina Engel, is currently in prison and facing trial in Dresden. She is one of the best-known German far-left Antifa members, and she and her fiancé have built a nationwide network that has regularly planned, prepared and carried out brutal attacks against their political opponents since 2015.
Engel is on trial with Lennart A., Jannis R. and Jonathan M. They are accused of at least six attacks against right-wing extremists in Saxony and Thuringia starting in October 2018. The indictment accuses them of “covertly planned, precisely executed, brute force operations.”
According to the Pleiteticker portal, the leader of the Budapest group that took part in the hammer attacks, Tobias Edelhoff, who is currently in custody in Hungary, has direct links to Lina Engel, who is accused of involvement in several far-left attacks. According to the key witness in the case, Edelhoff is also part of the Hammerbande inner circle.
Some of the Hammerbande’s victims were targeted spontaneously for wearing clothing thought to be associated with right-wing circles; however, other targets had been surveilled for weeks. The terror group is also known for disguising themselves as police officers as they approach their victims, such as the attack on the chairman of the NPD youth organization Young Nationalists, Paul Rzehaczek, who was beaten on March 11, 2021, inside his home in Ellenburg. His attackers beat him with hammers, and he was taken to the hospital with serious injuries to his feet.
The group is known for organizing such attacks, and many of them are rehearsed and have pre-assigned roles. The police say one member keeps track of the time and gives orders while another person makes “first contact” with the victim, such as asking him for the time or simply approaching the victim and hitting them with a hammer. The other members of the group are assigned to either restrain the target or partake in the assault.