BERLIN, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Stuttgart higher regional court sentenced the administrator of the German right-wing extreme internet news portal Altermedia Germany to two-and-a-half years in prison on Thursday.
The court found Ralph-Thomas K., 28, guilty of founding and directing a criminal organization, as well as sedition. The German federal prosecution had demanded a higher sentence of three-and-a-half years for the defendant. Three female co-defendants received probationary sentences of up to two years.
Ralph-Thomas K. is an IT specialist from the Black Forest region of Germany and acted as Altermedia Germany's administrator from 2012 to 2016. The website was considered to be the country's leading right-wing extreme internet portal between 2003 and 2016.
Joining the blog after the arrest of its previous administrator Axel Moeller in 2011, Ralph-Thomas K. operated Altermedia Germany through servers located in the United States and later Russia to escape prosecution by German security authorities. The site was shut down by police in January 2016.
According to the federal prosecution office, the defendants were responsible for spreading a "massive amount" of right-wing extreme and national socialist ideology through the notorious internet portal. Information published on Altermedia Germany frequently fell under the legal definition of sedition as it encouraged violence against foreigners and denied the scale and/or existence of the Holocaust.
The prosecutors built their case on a sample of 30 examples of content hosted by Ralph-Thomas K ranging from comparisons between foreigners and vermin, to outright death threats. The prosecutors sought to demonstrate that the defendants wanted to create "a right-wing extreme alternative public sphere through ideologically-influenced reporting."
