<p>BERLIN — A German court on Monday convicted a man of attempted murder and gave him a nearly 10-year prison sentence for removing hundreds of screws from a high-speed railway track in an effort to cause a derailment.</p>
<p>The state court in Wiesbaden sentenced the 52-year-old man to nine years and 10 months behind bars, German news agency dpa reported.</p>
<p>According to prosecutors, the man removed more than 250 screws from a stretch of the Frankfurt-Cologne high-speed line, one of Germany’s most important routes, in March 2020.</p>
<p>More than 400 trains over several days used the tracks at high speed before two drivers noticed that something was amiss. A check then found that a roughly 80-meter (263-foot) stretch of track was loose.</p>
<p>An expert told the two-month trial that a train would have derailed if another five to 30 trains had passed over the spot, causing a disaster in which people would have died.</p>
<p>Prosecutors had sought a 13-year sentence. The defense lawyer had called for the acquittal of the man, who was homeless at the time and was arrested in Cologne a few days later, arguing it wasn’t proven that his client was responsible. </p>
