The far-right extremist convicted of carrying out the deadly 2019 attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, has briefly taken two prison staff hostage and was injured when he was restrained by other staff inside the facility near the city of Magdeburg.
Stephan Balliet had taken two staff members hostage at around 9 p.m. Monday night for about an hour, the German Justice Ministry confirmed in a statement, detailing that the hostages were not injured.
It was initially unclear why Balliet would have managed to take hostage the two employees of the Burg prison, located northeast of the city of Magdeburg. The incident has triggered an extensive police operation and investigations led by the State Criminal Bureau are ongoing inside the prison.
On October 9, 2019, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Balliet attempted to force his way into a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle. When the door resisted, he shot dead two people standing nearby and wounded two others as he fled.
He later confessed to the attack and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2020.
He is currently serving time in a modern high-security facility in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, about 100 kilometers west of Berlin.
