Friday March 3, 2023
The defendant (left) is escorted to the courtroom by a police officer. Image: Daniel Vogl, dpa
Munich (HOL) - A mother has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a district court in Bavaria, Germany, for the murder of her baby. The district court of Schweinfurt convicted the Somali refugee for killing her three-month-old daughter last August.
The woman, who is presumably 28 years old, had confessed to stabbing the baby nearly a dozen times with a kitchen knife in a refugee accommodation in Geldersheim near Schweinfurt. While the motive for the crime could not be conclusively established, the court suggested that a troubled relationship with the baby's father may have played a part. The woman may have wanted to punish her husband, from whom she felt insufficient support, the prosecutor said.
According to the prosecutor, the defendant was dissatisfied with her marriage and wanted to separate from her husband because he was occasionally violent. After fleeing from Somalia via Turkey, Greece and France to Germany, the woman and her husband resided in a shared room at the so-called anchor center in Geldersheim. On the day of the crime, August 6, 2022, the child's father left the room and spent time with his friends, while the accused took a kitchen knife and stabbed the baby's body eight times, leading to the baby's death.
Initially, prosecutors charged the woman with murder, but by the end of the court proceedings, she pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The prosecutor explained that the murder characteristics, such as malice, were not fulfilled because the child's father, who could have protected the girl, was several hundred meters away at the time. However, the court assumed that the killing was murder.
The prosecutor requested a sentence of nine years in prison, while the woman's defence attorney argued for a manslaughter conviction and requested a sentence of eight years in prison. A psychiatrist testified that the Somali woman was guilty of the crime, but there was only evidence of a borderline emotionally unstable personality disorder. The defendant reportedly wept uncontrollably when the verdict was announced.
It is worth noting that Thursday's verdict is not yet final.