In the trial of a murder by torture in a refugee home in Lohmar (Rhein-Sieg district), the Bonn Regional Court sentenced one defendant to life imprisonment. An accomplice was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment – due to his massive drug and alcohol consumption, he was considered to be of diminished capacity at the time of the crime. Both defendants were convicted of murder by cruel means of murder on Monday.
The two 28 and 29-year-old men from Morocco had tied up and maltreated a 45-year-old man in his room in the municipal accommodation in Lohmar for several hours in July 2020. Among other things, they hit the victim’s skull more than 20 times with a table leg. His face was completely disfigured afterwards. The autopsy revealed 200 skin injuries all over the body.
Even for the experience of a jury court, this was a particularly horrific case, it was said at the beginning of the judgement. One police officer had described his first impression at the crime scene with the words: “That was torture. Everything was covered in blood. During the trial, the defendants had largely claimed memory lapses.
The court could only guess about the reasons why the man had been so horribly beaten up. Even if the defendants had been attacked with a knife – as one of the two had explained – one could not speak of self-defence in this “orgy of violence”. “The two people sitting here,” the judgement said, “had enjoyed killing.”
The presiding judge also said that frustration could not be ruled out. The accused had previously learned that their asylum applications had been rejected. Afterwards, they had met the later victim and had been drinking and taking drugs for two days until “something went terribly wrong”.
After the verdict, both defence lawyers declared that they would appeal.