Stockholm – Germany has asked Sweden to extradite a man serving a life sentence for a string of racially motivated shootings to stand trial in the murder of a Jewish woman in Frankfurt nearly a quarter century ago.
Dubbed “Laserman” for the laser sight he used on a rifle, John Ausonius was convicted of one murder and nine attempted murders after series of shootings against immigrants in Sweden in the 1990s.
German investigators suspect he was also involved in the killing of a 68-year-old woman in Frankfurt in 1992.
Prosecutor Krister Petersson on Tuesday said Ausonius, now 63, will be questioned this week about the extradition request. He expected a court hearing to be held in the next two weeks.
Noting he hadn’t seen the German request yet, Ausonius’ defense lawyer Thomas Olsson said he would likely reject it because “it is not possible to conduct even a remotely fair trial after such a long time.”
A spokesman for the Frankfurt prosecutors’ office, Sinan Akdogan, confirmed that a request had been sent to Swedish authorities to extradite a 63-year-old suspect.
He declined to provide further information.
Blanka Zmigrod, an employee at a Moevenpick restaurant in Frankfurt, was shot dead on her way home from work Feb. 23, 1992, according to Juedische Allgemeine, Germany’s biggest Jewish newspaper.
German prosecutors had shelved the case, but it was reopened in 2014 as part of a nationwide effort to review suspected far-right killings following revelations about a neo-Nazi gang that had committed a string of murders which authorities initially blamed on migrant gangs.