Main offender in 2009 Munich attacks to pay damages

German police guard the Munich court in March 2010 where the three Swiss teenagers were on trial Keystone

The ringleader of a group of Swiss teenagers who attacked five random people in Munich in 2009 has been fined punitive damages of €120,000 (CHF130,000) by a Munich district court.

The Swiss man, now 24, must also pay for any future health problems of the plaintiff, a 53-year-old businessman from North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany, who almost died after the beating by three Swiss 16-year-olds on a school trip.

The three were convicted of attacking three unemployed men in a Munich park, one of whom was disabled, in the early hours of July 1, 2009. Soon afterwards they pounded the German businessman almost to death and on the way home to their lodgings they attacked a student. The attacks all happened within half an hour. The three were arrested shortly afterwards.

The events were frontpage news and triggered calls by a shocked public on both sides of the border for a clampdown on juvenile violence.

The defendants, who had previous convictions in Switzerland, attended college in Küsnacht, outside Zurich.

Prison in Germany

In November 2010, a district court in Munich gave the main defendant seven years in German prison for attempted murder and intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. He was released after serving four years and was sent back to Switzerland. He is banned from entering Germany, with an exception made for this latest civil lawsuit.

The second defendant received four years and ten months for the same charges, while the third received two years and ten months for intent to inflict grievous bodily harm.

The court, which sat for eight months, found the main defendant to be the initiator of the violence and instigator of the others, officials explained. He was involved in all the attacks.

They added that a mitigating factor was the fact that two of the teenagers had made confessions and an agreement on financial compensation for their victims had been made.