In the Thuringian town of Gera, the serial offender Rasem A. from Syria tore a cross of Christ from the neck of a 79-year-old man in broad daylight. He later beat up several people. FOCUS online knows the criminal record of the migrant, who served several prison sentences.
On June 5, 2024, a brutal and unprecedented act of violence took place in the centre of the Thuringian city of Gera.
At around 12 noon, a 27-year-old refugee from Syria approached a German pensioner and ripped his necklace with a Christ cross from his neck. The symbol was a silver pendant worth around 250 euros. He then allegedly hit the 79-year-old victim in the face with his fist. The senior citizen suffered a bleeding wound.
According to FOCUS-online information, the alleged perpetrator Rasem A. acted completely unexpectedly. He did not shout anything either before or during the offence. An investigator told FOCUS online that it was a ‘lightning attack’.
According to the public prosecutor’s office in Gera, the motive for the offence is obviously ‘religious’. Senior public prosecutor Thomas Riebel told FOCUS online: ‘According to the statement by the accused, he saw a disregard for Christianity in the way the victim is said to have worn the cross.’Apparently, the Syrian was bothered by a second necklace that the pensioner was wearing around his neck and felt that it had affected his religious beliefs. The immigrant, who came to Germany in 2015, did not provide any further details.
After the act of violence, police officers briefly arrested the Syrian near the scene of the crime and took him to court for a custody examination. There, however, Rasem A. was released again. According to the police, detention was not possible ‘due to a lack of legal requirements’.
However, the thug was known to the police and the judiciary and had several previous convictions; he is considered a serial offender. FOCUS online exclusively publishes Rasem A.’s criminal file:
2017, Gera Regional Court, multiple offences of grievous bodily harm, two years and six months juvenile sentence.
2019, Gera District Court, offence against the Narcotics Act and other offences, two years and nine months’ imprisonment, to be served in full.
2022, Gera Local Court, offence against the Narcotics Act and multiple assaults, one year prison sentence, to be served in full.
This list alone reveals that the migrant is prone to serious acts of violence and is not deterred even by coercive state measures.
The – apparently legally correct – decision not to remand him in custody after the brutal attack on the pensioner on on 5th of June proved to be fatal in retrospect. Just two days later, the 27-year-old struck again in Gera city centre.
At short intervals and independently of each other, Rasem A. beat up nine victims, some of them pensioners.
‘Among other things, he punched a man in the face, causing him to suffer a brain haemorrhage and a stroke. He was admitted to hospital,’ Thomas Riebel told FOCUS online. Some of the other victims also suffered serious injuries. When police officers tried to arrest the perpetrator, he was unruly.
Nevertheless, this time a magistrate sent Rasem A. to a prison.
The Syrian is now in a psychiatric facility where he is ‘provisionally accommodated’, as Thomas Riebel from the Gera public prosecutor’s office told FOCUS online on Monday. It is said to be the Stadtroda Specialist Clinic.
In addition, his office had prepared a petition in the precautionary proceedings, which was submitted to the Gera Regional Court at the end of August 2024. It is to be examined whether the man should be permanently placed in a psychiatric hospital.
‘The defendant is accused of 15 counts of intentional bodily harm in the petition,’ explained the senior public prosecutor. ‘Of these, one case involves an assault on law enforcement officers, one case involves robbery and one case involves attempted robbery and extortion in combination with grievous bodily harm in combination with damage to property’.
Riebel did not want to give any details about the Syrian’s medical condition ‘due to the protection of his privacy’. ‘A brief forensic psychiatric report was initially prepared. The final report is still pending.’
It is currently not known whether the Gera immigration authorities have attempted to deport the serial criminal to his home country of Syria.
The Syrian’s defence lawyer, Udo Freier from Greiz, did not want to comment on the case to FOCUS online. ‘We would first like to wait for the full expert report on my client’s state of health,’ said the lawyer on Monday.
And Europeans still wonder why we Americans will never give up our guns.