MUNICH – A German court on Aug 6 handed an Afghan man a life sentence for a car-ramming attack in Munich in 2025 which killed a two-year-old girl and her mother and left dozens injured.

The court in Munich found the man, named only as Farhad N., guilty of two counts of murder, 23 of attempted murder and 22 counts of bodily harm, 19 of them serious.

The court found that the offences carried a “particular gravity of guilt” – a designation that makes it much less likely that the 25-year-old will ever be released from prison.

The attack was one of several committed by foreign nationals in the run-up to 2025’s general election that inflamed debate on immigration and security.

It also came on the eve of the Munich Security Conference, a major gathering of high-level figures from the worlds of politics and defence.

Farhad N. drove a Mini Cooper around a police car and then accelerated into a 1,400-strong trade union march, hurling a 37-year-old woman and her young daughter through the air for 10m.

They both sustained severe head injuries from which they died several days later.

Presiding judge Michael Hoehne said that the mother had deliberately chosen the back of the march because it had a stronger police presence and she felt safer there.

Hoehne described the aftermath of the attack as “a field of nothing but debris, 12m wide”.

He said some of those injured “are still suffering today” and quoted one victim as saying they had lived “one life before the attack and another one after it”.

The only reason the attack was not even deadlier was that the number of people Farhad N. ran over slowed down and eventually stopped t...