Saturday March 4, 2023
From file: Entry area of the Conn Barracks, home of the new anchor center in Geldersheim/Niederwerrn, northern Bavaria | Photo: Johannes Hardenacke, government of Lower Franconia
A regional court in southern Germany has sentenced a Somalian woman to life behind bars for killing her three-month old baby with a kitchen knife. The attack took place inside a so-called anchor facility for refugees, which are used to accommodate asylum seekers and process their applications.
A German court has sentenced a woman from Somalia to life imprisonment for the murder of her baby in a refugee shelter in Bavaria, a court spokesperson said on Thursday (March 2).
The Regional Court of Schweinfurt charged the woman for stabbing her three-month-old daughter eight times with a kitchen knife last August in a refugee accommodation in Geldersheim, near Schweinfurt.
The motive for the crime remains unclear, the German news agency dpa reported, adding that Thursday's verdict is not yet legally binding. Due to a lack of documentation, the woman is estimated to be 28 years old.
The father of the child had been several hundred meters away at the time of the murder, dpa reported.
Defense demands reduced prison sentence
The prosecutor had asked for a prison sentence of nine years for manslaughter.
The woman's defense attorney also joined the demand for a conviction for manslaughter, but pleaded for a prison sentence of eight years.
The court, however, followed the original charge, according to which the woman had inflicted severe injuries on the baby out of malice.
According to a psychiatrist, the woman was culpable at the time of the crime, and there were indications of an emotionally unstable personality disorder of the borderline type, dpa wrote.
With dpa and AFP