German court hands Swede life sentence for 1992 killing

BERLIN – A German court has sentenced a Swede to life in prison for shooting dead a woman in Frankfurt 26 years ago.

Public broadcaster HR reported that the Frankfurt regional court found John Ausonius guilty Wednesday of murdering restaurant employee Blanka Zmigrod in 1992.

Ausonius allegedly believed the victim, who was Jewish, had stolen his electronic diary.

German prosecutors had reopened the case in 2014 as part of a nationwide effort to review suspected far-right killings. Ausonius, who was already serving a life sentence in Sweden for unrelated cases, was extradited to Germany in 2016.

The defendant became known as "Laserman" for the gunsight he used in a series of shootings of immigrants in Sweden during the 1990s, in which one person was killed and several others were injured.