After surveillance video shows the 57-year-old German man putting a suspicious powder on a colleague's sandwich, authorities search his home and find a substance a judge later describes as more dangerous than all combat agents used in World War II.
A German man has been sentenced to life in prison for poisoning his colleagues' sandwiches with mercury and other substances over several years, leaving one in a coma and two others with serious kidney damage.
The regional court in Bielefeld, about 330 kilometres west of Berlin, found the 57-year-old man guilty on Thursday of attempted murder and gave him the maximum possible sentence. The man, identified only as Klaus O, in line with German privacy rules, was arrested in May after surveillance video showed him putting a suspicious powder on a colleague's sandwich at a business in the nearby town of Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock.
When authorities searched his home they found a primitive chemistry laboratory in his basement and a substance that Judge Georg Zimmermann described as"more dangerous than all combat agents used in World War II."Prosecutors said they believed he wanted to see his colleagues' physical decline. Two victims, aged 27 and 67, suffered chronic kidney damage from poisoning with lead and cadmium. Both men now faced a heightened risk of cancer in life.German news agency dpa quoted Judge Zimmermann as saying the court considered the case to be as serious as a murder and ordered that Klaus O should remain in prison after serving his life sentence — normally 15 years in Germany — because he remained a danger to the public.
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