Iraqi Kurdish man confesses to murder of 14-year-old German girl
BERLIN,— The trial of Ali Bashar, accused of raping and killing a teenage girl, has commenced under tight security. The defendant has confessed to the murder but has denied the rape charge.
A 22-year-old man confessed to strangling a teenage girl to death at the opening of his murder trial on Tuesday in the western German city of Wiesbaden, but denied that he had raped her beforehand.
The defendant, an Iraqi Kurdish asylum seeker identified as Ali Bashar, told the court that he killed the 14-year-old jewish schoolgirl Susanna Maria Feldman in May 2018.
“Everything went black and then it happened,” Ali Bashar said through an interpreter. “I don’t know how it could have happened.”
Ali Bashar, who fled from Iraqi Kurdistan with his family in 2015, also apologized to the parents of Susanna Maria Feldman, saying he knew that his “apology can’t make anything right again.”
Denies rape
In his confession, Ali Bashar insisted that he and Susanna Maria Feldman had consensual sex before she was killed.
Prosecutors allege that the man forced the girl to have sex with him and then killed her after she threatened to go to the police. Afterward, according to prosecutors, he and an unknown accomplice buried her body before he allegedly used her phone to text her mother that she was in Paris.
When her remains were found two weeks later, Ali Bashar and his family had left Germany for Iraq. He was then arrested by Kurdish security forces and was taken back to Germany. despite the absence of a formal extradition treaty between Baghdad and Berlin.
Heavy security
The case has ignited the immigration debate in Germany, with the nations far right using Ali Bashar as a symbol of a threat allegedly posed by asylum seekers from the Middle East.
Several dozen protesters demonstrated outside the courthouse in Wiesbaden, where the crime took place, displaying a sign reading “No Leniency for Muslims.”
A verdict in the trial is not expected until May. Ali Bashar faces life imprisonment if found guilty and could be deported back to Iraq, though he will likely serve half of a prison sentence in Germany. He also faces a separate trial from March 19 where he has been charged with twice raping an 11-year-old girl.
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