A court in Munich has sentenced a 25-year-old Afghan man to life imprisonment for ramming a car into a trade union demonstration in February 2025, killing a mother and her toddler and injuring dozens of others. The Munich Higher Regional Court handed down the verdict on Thursday, also ruling that the crime was of "particular severity" — a designation that makes early release significantly harder even after the minimum 15-year threshold required under German law.

The attack took place on 13 February 2025, when Farhad N. — then 24 — drove his white Mini at full speed into the rear of a procession organised by Verdi, Germany's main public services union, in central Munich. Around 1,400 people were participating in the march. The vehicle travelled approximately 23 metres before being brought to a halt by the bodies beneath it. Two victims, a 37-year-old Algerian-born engineer who worked for the City of Munich and her two-year-old daughter, who was in a pushchair, were thrown roughly ten metres by the impact. Both died two days later. A total of 44 people were injured, many seriously. Presiding judge Michael Höhne described the scene as a "swathe of destruction" and said the defendant had acted "like a snowplough, with an absolute will to annihilate."

Farhad N. was convicted on charges of two counts of murder and 23 counts of attempted murder — one more than prosecutors had sought — along with 19 counts of causing grievous bodily harm and three of causing intentional bodily harm. The verdict matched the prosecution's sentencing request, while the defence had argued for a standard life sentence and placement in a psychiatric facility, citing diminished responsibility. Psychological experts acknowledged the defendant had some mental health difficulties, but found these did not amount to a psychosis or sufficiently reduce his criminal culpability.

Investigators established an Islamist motivation relatively quickly. After his arrest, Farhad N. shouted religious phrases and referred to officers as "unbelievers." The court heard that he had arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor in 2015 and had been considered well-integrated until, in the months before the attack, he radicalised under the influence of conservative Afghan preachers whose sermons he encountered on social media. He came to believe that Western countries bore responsibility for suffering in Afghanistan and Gaza, and that killing random people in Germany amounted to legitimate retribution. He expressed no remorse at any stage of the proceedings. Both the attacker and his two victims had migrant backgrounds — a fact that his victims' family invoked when urging the public not to exploit their deaths for political ends.

The attack occurred a week before German federal elections, with the country hosting the Munich Security Conference simultaneously, and the incident quickly became part of a charged public debate about migration policy. Following Thursday's verdict, a Verdi representative in Bavaria said that survivors had been sustained by "great solidarity within the unions and the broader city community," adding: "They know, and will continue to know: you are not alone."}