John Ausonius

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Ausonius, 1986

John Ausonius (* 12 July 1953 as Wolfgang Alexander John Zaugg in Lidingö ) is a convicted neo-Nazi Swedish murderer .

In 1991/92 he shot a total of eleven people with a migrant background in Sweden , killing one. Because of his execution with a rifle with laser aiming device, he became known in the media as the " Lasermann " ( Swedish laser men ). He was sentenced to life imprisonment in Sweden in 1994 for murder, eight attempted murder and eight serious robberies .

2018 he was convicted of another murder he at a Jewish concentration camp survivors in 1992 Frankfurt am Main , to life in prison with subsequent committed preventive detention condemned.

Origin and offenses

Ausonius was born as Wolfgang Alexander John Zaugg . His father immigrated to Sweden from Switzerland and his mother from Germany . He changed his name first to John WA Stannerman and then to John WA Ausonius , whose name he had come across in the prison library. After bank robberies and convictions for multiple violent crimes , he went on to attempted serial murder .

From August 1991 to January 1992, as an initially undetected perpetrator, he shot a total of eleven people in ten different acts in Stockholm and Uppsala . One person was killed, the others survived seriously injured. All of the victims had dark hair or skin and were immigrants. Ausonius first used a rifle with a laser aiming device, which is where his name as laser men in the Swedish press comes from, and later a revolver .

The acts led to Sweden's second largest police operation after that of the 1986 murder of Olof Palme . After six months, Ausonius was redacted in a bank robbery.

Investigations

The police found it difficult to identify a perpetrator because Ausonius had no connection with his victims before the attacks. The breakthrough came when police were looking into reports of a white Nissan Micra SLX that was seen at the scene on January 22-23 , 1992. The police began to contact all owners of this type of car. Ausonius had rented such a vehicle from a Stockholm car rental company. When the police tried to contact Ausonius during the manhunt, they found that neither the address given nor the telephone number were correct. On February 25, a subpoena was sent to a post office box believed Ausonius was using. Since Ausonius followed the news and realized that the police were looking for the type of vehicle he was using, he temporarily traveled from Sweden to South Africa .

Meanwhile, the police had checked his criminal record and determined that he had a criminal record. One of the investigators had with the Palme murder investigation of John Stannerman ( 'earlier Ausonius name) heard a known palm-haters, who used the cinema Grand in street Sveavägen had worked as a projectionist. However, at the time of Palmes death, Ausonius was in prison for several violent crimes in Kumla and was quickly ruled out as a suspect.

In the course of the investigation it emerged that Ausonius was a regular customer of several pawn shops . A stranger had robbed 18 banks in Stockholm and fled each time on a bicycle. It turned out that Ausonius had released his belongings from the pawn shop after every robbery that took place.

Ausonius traveled back to Sweden in May 1992 and emptied his mailbox, which informed the police of his return. Since his address was unknown, his favorite video library was watched and followed to his home on June 11, 1992. The following day he left the house in the morning, rode his bike to Södermalm , changed into a driveway and robbed the Svenska Handelsbanken on Hornsgatan in front of the police . After an exchange of fire, Ausonius was overwhelmed.

Punishment for murder in Sweden

On January 14, 1994, the Stockholm District Court ( Stockholms tingsrätt ) sentenced Ausonius to life imprisonment despite denial. He was acquitted of two murder attempts. During the subsequent proceedings before Svea hovrätt , the Stockholm Court of Appeal, his two lawyers refused to represent him because he had mistreated them on October 4, 1994 while in custody in Kronoberg . When the trial continued with two new defense lawyers, he attacked them in court on January 31, 1995. The court did not allow another change and on May 19, 1995 upheld the life imprisonment.

In August 2000 Ausonius confessed to his actions.

His victims were:

  • August 3, 1991 - An anthropology student at the Gärdet underground station
  • October 21, 1991 - An anthropology student in Lappkärrsberget
  • October 27, 1991 - A homeless man near Torsgränd, Vasastan
  • November 1, 1991 - A musician at Brygghuset, Vasastan
  • November 8, 1991 - A student at Körsbärsvägen, near the Royal Stockholm University of Technology
  • January 22, 1992 - A researcher on Studentvagen in Uppsala
  • January 23, 1992 - Two people in the Somali Association at Norrtull
  • January 28, 1992 - A kiosk owner in Djursholm
  • January 30, 1992 - A kiosk owner at Hägerstensåsen subway station

In 2016 he was still in jail, but regularly got out. Swedish legal experts therefore considered an early dismissal possible.

Punishment for murder in Germany

The public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main brought an indictment against Ausonius in May 2017, 22 years after the investigation was concluded, with the charge that 68-year-old Blanka Zmigrod was on the street with a during a visit to Frankfurt am Main on the night of February 23, 1992 Having murdered and robbed a headshot. Zmigrod had previously received racist abuse from Ausonius . She was a Holocaust survivor , which was recognizable by a tattoo, but was not mentioned in the public search (among other things in a contribution from file number XY ... unsolved ). The cloakroom woman in a restaurant had been murdered on the way home; the motive is assumed that Ausonius suspected the woman of having stolen his pocket computer. Ausonius was extradited to Germany for these criminal proceedings in December 2016 after German authorities interrogated him in Swedish custody in August 2016. He was in custody in Frankfurt am Main until the verdict was pronounced. On February 21, 2018, Ausonius was found guilty of murder by the Frankfurt am Main regional court . The Chamber sentenced Ausonius to life imprisonment and ordered subsequent preventive detention on. Due to the delayed prosecution, four years have already been served. Due to an agreement with Sweden, detention must begin in Sweden and not in Germany. On November 20, 2018, the Federal Court of Justice rejected the appeal as unfounded, as the judgment of the Frankfurt Regional Court did not contain any legal errors. The conviction is now final.

reception

In 2002 Gellert Tamas published the book Lasermannen - En Berättelse Om Sverige , for which he was awarded the Swedish journalism prize Guldspaden in the same year . It deals with the laser men and the media hype. He was criticized for the parallelization of the then rise of the right-wing populist party Ny democrati with the racist movements in Sweden and their connections to Ausonius. The fact that the victims were not informed before publication was also criticized.

In 2005, Sveriges Television , the Swedish state television, turned the book into a three-part series. Ausonius was portrayed by David Dencik . Sten Ljunggren played the role of investigator Lennart Thorin.

In 2011, the right-wing terrorist Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik named Ausonius someone with whom he shared the political goals. After the self-exposure of the neo-Nazi terror group National Socialist Underground (NSU) at the end of 2011, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution pointed out the parallels to Ausonius and described him as a possible role model for the NSU; Ausonius seriously injured 11 people and killed one in 10 assassinations in Sweden. Ausonius had also been described as a role model in the so-called Field Manual of the blood-and-honor network prepared for violence in 2000. In the course of the criminal proceedings, however, the German investigative authorities found no direct link between the acts that the NSU or Ausonius are accused of.

literature

Web links

Endnotes

  1. ^ Daniel Müller: The Laserman. in: Die Zeit No. 23/2017, p. 12
  2. ^ A b Wolf Schmidt: Blueprint "Lasermann". In: the daily newspaper , September 5, 2012.
  3. ↑ http://www.rp-online.de/panorama/toetete-der-lasermann-auch-in-deutschland-aid-1.6409365
  4. ↑ Frankfurt: Right-wing extremist "Lasermann" accused of murder. In: Spiegel Online , May 9, 2017.
  5. ↑ Kevin Culina: The death of Blanka Z. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , December 21, 2017; Christoph Schmidt-Lunau: Judgment on racially motivated murder: "Life sentence" for Lasermann. In: Die Tageszeitung , February 21, 2018. On Zmigrod's life, Swedish racist 'laser man' gets life for murdering Holocaust survivor. In: The Times of Israel , February 21, 2018 (AFP).
  6. ↑ Murder in Frankfurt: Sweden delivers the "Lasermann" to Germany. In: Spiegel Online , December 15, 2016.
  7. ^ A b Oliver Teutsch: Extradition to Frankfurt: Lasermann comes to court. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , May 9, 2017.
  8. ↑ Peter Maxwill: Judgment against "Lasermann" John Ausonius: Cold-blooded, angry, ready for violence. In: Spiegel Online , February 21, 2018.
  9. ↑ hessenschau de, Frankfurt Germany: BGH confirms life imprisonment for "Lasermann". November 27, 2018, accessed on December 31, 2018 (German).
  10. ↑ Swedish racist 'laser man' gets life for murdering Holocaust survivor. In: The Times of Israel , February 21, 2018 (AFP).
  11. ↑ German Bundestag , 17th electoral period: recommendation for a resolution and report of the 2nd committee of inquiry according to Article 44 of the Basic Law (of the NSU committee of inquiry of the Bundestag) BT-Drs. 17/14600 , August 22, 2013, p. 163 f.
  12. ↑ German Bundestag, 17th electoral period: recommendation for a resolution and report of the 2nd committee of inquiry under Article 44 of the Basic Law. Statement by the SPD parliamentary group. BT-Drs. 17/14600 , August 22, 2013, p. 875 f.
personal data
SURNAME Ausonius, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zaugg, Wolfgang Alexander John (maiden name); Stannerman, John WA (adopted name); Ausonius, John WA (adopted name); Ausonius, John Wolfgang Alexander (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish murderer
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Lidingö