Murder Charges Added in the "Germany in the Deepweb" Case

Murder charges have been filed against the owner of the German darknet forum “Germany in the Deepweb” in connection with the killings in the Munich Olympia shopping center last year.

Automatically Translated Press Release Below.

The Announcement

The public prosecutor’s office Mannheim has brought charges against a 31-year-old accused at the district court of Karlsruhe.

The accused is from March 2013 until the shutdown on 08.06.2017 from his residence in Karlsruhe as the sole administrator of the created and continuously evolving Underground Economy Forum “Germany in the Deep Web” with the addition “No control, everything allowed!” provided for the conduct of sales talks.The online platform, which aims for the greatest possible foreclosure, was one of the largest underground economy forums in the German-speaking world, with 23,028 registered users. The platform was only funded by donations in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

In the indictment, the accused is accused of having enabled the later gunman to acquire the semi-automatic weapon and its ammunition via the online platform maintained by him as an administrator in the anonymous TOR network. The public prosecutor’s office assumes in the charge of negligent homicide and negligent assault that the accused could have recognized and must that outside the legal, controlled arms market unreliable and unstable persons can procure a weapon and that the purchasers this for killing or Violation of people - as happened in the Munich killing spree - could use.

Because of this, as well as to further enable a barter of two semiautomatic handguns with ammunition, in which the alleged seller of the weapon used in Munich should have been involved again, the charge was further charged with allegations of violations of the weapons law.

Additional Charges

Due to the initiation of sales through the said platform, further allegations include aiding and abetting the deliberate unlawful conduct of a firearm in 17 cases, the deliberate unauthorized acquisition of a semi-automatic short weapon in eight cases and the deliberate unauthorized acquisition of a firearm in nine cases.

The prosecution continues to blame the accused for 29 remedies for intentional illicit drug trafficking and four cases of narcotics. The accused is since 9.08.2018 again in remand.

The investigations into the proceedings against the accused were conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Mannheim Public Prosecutor’s Office, Department of Cybercrime.

Screenshot from DiDW 2