A 30-year-old man confessed before the Augsburg Regional Court to killing his 15-year-old brother-in-law and injuring several other relatives with a knife. The defendant now has to answer for murder and quadruple attempted murder in the trial.
In April, he allegedly caused a bloodbath within his wife’s family in a refugee home in Augsburg because the wife wanted to divorce him. According to the indictment, the man cut the 15-year-old’s neck. The mother-in-law suffered life-threatening injuries in the attack and could only be saved by emergency surgery. Her husband and two daughters also suffered cuts.
The accused, an Afghan national, last lived in Freilassing in Upper Bavaria. At that time, his wife’s family lived in Augsburg with the 30-year-old’s five-year-old son. According to the prosecution, the wife had separated a few months earlier after her husband had already become violent.
He then allegedly planned to kill his wife, her mother and the wife’s brother because of the intended divorce. The man allegedly attacked his wife’s relatives with a kitchen knife with a blade of almost 22 centimetres. The wife herself was not in the family home at the time.
According to the indictment, the 30-year-old blamed the mother-in-law for the separation. According to the prosecution, the teenage brother-in-law was supposed to die because he had a special status for the Afghan family as the only male descendant. At the beginning of the trial, the accused made a partial confession. His lawyer read out a statement according to which the 30-year-old admitted to being responsible for the death of the youth and the injuries of the others. He regretted this.
The accused described the events in the asylum centre as a commotion. However, he himself had been attacked by the later victims when he actually wanted to leave the home. He had not wanted to hurt anyone, the accused explained. Rather, he had only drawn the kitchen knife in order to threaten them. He did not answer any further questions from the prosecution about what had happened.
According to his own statement, the 30-year-old had left Afghanistan for Iran as a child. He was married there more than ten years ago. According to the investigation, the man’s wife was only 12 or 13 years old at the time. Later, the Afghan fled to Sweden. After his asylum application was rejected there, he travelled on to Germany. He assumed that it would be easier for him to obtain asylum here.
Six more days of hearings are scheduled for the trial. The verdict could be announced at the end of January.
https://www.n-tv.de/panorama/Mann-gibt-Mord-und-Mordversuche-zu-article22219558.html