The man who supplied the mass killer of the Olympia Mall in Munich back in 2016 has been sentenced to seven years in prison

The young German man Philipp K. (photo) is a native of Marburg and sold a Glock pistol alongside 567 bullets to 18-year-old Iranian-German David Ali Sonboly, the mass shooter of the Munich Olympia Mall massacre of 2016. David killed nine people, wounded five others, and then killed himself after evading police for more than two hours. The darkweb seller, Philipp K. has to spend the next seven years in prison after being found guilty of negligent homicide in nine cases, negligent assault in five cases, and illegal arms trade.

Munich trial: The defendant Philipp K. (middle), his lawyers David Mühlberger (right) and Sascha Marks (left) in the district courtroom. © Sven Hoppe

On Monday 21st of January 2018, the Federal Court of Justice has rejected the 22 co-defendants’ pleas as unfounded, thus rendering into effect every individual sentence given by the court previously. The defendants, who were all related to the case, tried to downgrade the negligent homicide accusations to abetting attempted manslaughter which would have reduced their prison terms considerably.

The final decision comes after a year of court review proceedings. Philipp was sentenced to seven years in prison for selling the Glock pistol on the infamous darkweb platform called “Deutschland im Deep Web (DiDW).” The administrator of the website, 31-year-old co-defendant Alexander U. was also sentenced on 19th of December 2018 to six years of incarceration.

Philipp K. personally met David S. in two instances on May 20th and July 17th of 2016 in the town of Marburg. They made the deal on the “DiDW” platform and with the help of encryption messaging service Bitmessage.

Shortly after, at 17:52 PM on Friday, 22nd of July of 2016, David killed five teenagers and injured one inside a McDonald’s store in the Munich Olympia mall, killed three and wounded three others outside the mall, re-entered the mall and killed another young man, and then finally, injured another bypasser outside, as he was exiting the mall. The lone killer evaded arrest on foot for more than two hours into the next day but killed himself as the police were closing in on him.

© Arnd Wiegmann

Although the court acknowledged the fact that Philipp K. did not know about the shooter’s intentions, it rejected both the appeal of the defendant and co-defendants as unfounded:

“The revision of the defendant was unfounded, his sentence to seven years of imprisonment goes into effect,” said the Federal Court (BGH) on Monday 21st of January 2018 in Karlsruhe.

The 7-year sentence comes as a middle ground between the defense, who asked for 3.5 years of imprisonment, and the prosecution who asked for much harsher murder convictions.

Philipp K. expressed deep remorse for the victims and said that if he had known the killer’s intentions, he would never have sold the gun to the madman — a deranged teenager who adored Hitler, Breivik, and had radical political ideas.