Lina E., the convicted leader of the left-wing extremist hammer gang, has been ordered back into prison after refusing to testify as a witness against her former fiancé in an ongoing trial.
The Dresden Higher Regional Court imposed six months of coercive detention on the 31-year-old after she declined to make a statement in the Antifa-Ost proceedings against Johann G., her ex-partner and alleged co-defendant.
The court also imposed a €750 fine and ordered her to pay the costs of the proceedings.
She reportedly has already been taken into custody, Junge Freiheit reported..
Her lawyer announced that she would file an appeal.
Lina E. was sentenced in 2023 to five years and three months in prison for her leading role in the criminal organisation known as the Hammerbande.
The group carried out a series of targeted, highly brutal violent “commando-style” attacks between 2018 and 2020, primarily in Saxony and Thuringia, against individuals they identified as right-wing extremists or neo-Nazis.
They even raided people’s homes.
Among alleged assaults, the group was suspected of targeting men and women with hammers, clubs, metal bars, and pepper spray, causing serious injuries.
At least 22 people were injured.
The court described the group’s activities as a form of “self-justice” that undermined the state’s monopoly on violence.
The 2023 conviction of Lina E. and her co-defendants triggered significant unrest.
Around 1,500 left-wing sympathisers mobilised under the slogan “Tag X” and protested in Dresden and Leipzig, with some demonstrations turning violent.
Critics accused parts of the radical left of openly threatening judges, prosecutors, and witnesses, sabotaging cars of police officers, and of glorifying the Hammerbande’s attacks as legitimate “anti-fascist” action.
She was released early on probation in May 2026 after serving two-thirds of her sentence.
The decision was based on a positive expert assessment that she had credibly distanced herself from her former readiness to use violence, behaved well in prison, and had a viable future outlook.
The Federal Court of Justice upheld the early release.
The current coercive detention order effectively ends that conditional freedom because of her refusal to cooperate with the prosecution in the related ongoing trial.
Her refusal to testify against her former partner has renewed accusations of solidarity with criminal structures, even as she was credited with credibly walking away from political violence.
During the hearing, she waved to the alleged perpetrator and indicated a hug with her arm.
“If coercive detention is the pressure they want to build, then I will face it,” Lina declared, hugging Johann G. to the applause of left-wing extremists present in the court.
German public broadcaster ZDF reported that, according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, 37,000 people belonged to the left-wing extremist spectrum in 2023 and the domestic intelligence service classified 11,200 people as prone to violence.
There is also an alleged member of the hammer gang in the European Parliament, with Italian MEP Ilaria Salis, suspected of having attacked a man with a hammer in Budapest. However, she is not being prosecuted because a majority in the EP refuses to lift her parliamentary immunity.
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (BGH), the country’s highest criminal court based in Karlsruhe, southwest Germany, has confirmed the early release of Lina E., the convicted leader of a violent left-wing extremist group known as the “Hammerbande” (hammer gang), news agency dpa…
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) May 28, 2026
