Prosecutors seek life jail for Dresden headscarf murder (2nd Roundup)

Nov 9, 2009, 16:44 GMT

   Dresden, Germany - A German prosecutor demanded Monday that judges sentence a self-avowed racist to life in prison without easy parole for stabbing a pregnant Egyptian pharmacist to death.

   In his summation, senior prosecutor Frank Heinrich said Alex W, aged 28, had coldbloodedly planned in advance to kill headscarf-clad Marwa al-Shirbini in a German courtroom this year 'out of sheer hatred for non-Europeans and Muslims.'

Lawyers representing her family agreed, and also demanded the punishment of officials for the security breach that allowed W to smuggle a knife in his bag to kill al-Shirbini in a busy Dresden, Germany courtroom.

'Everyone who enabled him to bring in the weapon must be made to face responsibility,' said lawyer Khaled Abou Bakr Othman.

Hamid Kalifa, chairman of the Chamber of Egyptian Lawyers, criticized the failure of the police to save al-Shirbini and her Egyptian scientist husband, who was shot in error by a policeman in the melee. The husband has filed charges against the policeman.

   Heiko Lesch, another lawyer representing the husband, told the accused, 'When I look at you, I am ashamed to call myself a German.'

Yet another lawyer for the family, Joseph Helal from Paris, told the court the punishment must be a deterrent to similar racists.

'In the name of half a million Arab lawyers, I say that it is essential to give this accused the most severe penalty available in German law and set an example to all those who do not respect human life,' said Kalifa.

A verdict is scheduled for Wednesday, but the sudden arrival of a document from Russia, where W was born and raised, may hold that up.

The document from a Russian prosecutor confirmed reports that W had been exempted from Russian military service in 2000 on the grounds of schizophrenia, though there was no record between 1998 and 2001 of him being in treatment for this mental illness.

Presiding judge Birgit Wiegand urged W to reveal fast if he had had a schizophrenic episode when he stabbed al-Shirbini. A psychologist who has described W as sane is to be called to court Tuesday to comment on the Russian document.

   The stabbing happened at an appeal hearing, just after al-Shirbini had just testified about racist slurs W had uttered against her in 2008 at a playground. On July 1, prosecutors were seeking a harsher sentence against him but there was no special security in the court.

W stared impassively at the ground, with a hood pulled over his head, as the state prosecutor called for the maximum murder penalty.

   'His guilt is especially great,' the prosecutor told the Dresden court, a different panel from that which tried the insult case.

   'In the sight on her 3-year-old son, he butchered this mother as if he were a hired assassin,' said Heinrich, who said that the attempt to kill her husband, who tried to rescue her, was also intentional. The husband was gravely wounded.

   Germany has no death penalty, but the prosecutor said W should receive the highest penalty, life in jail, which is reserved for attacks of a heinous nature and those on unsuspecting victims.

   Heinrich called for the court to rule that both these features applied in this case.

   Life prisoners in Germany commonly win parole after 15 years, but such a ruling would delay parole consideration for an extra 3 to 10 years and function as a recommendation to keep W in prison till he dies.

   The case triggered outrage in Egypt, amid perceptions that W was killed because she regularly wore an Islamic headscarf.

   W is charged with the murder of al-Shirbini, the attempted murder of her husband, who was in Germany to pursue research, and causing dangerous bodily harm in the melee on July 1 before police could restrain him.

   'He went at them both with all his might, determined and focussed,' said the prosecutor. 'He killed a human being and wounded another so seriously that it was only a matter of luck that the man survived.

   'He ignored commands to stop from the judge and from his own lawyer. He kept mercilessly stabbing her as she lay on the ground.

   'He deliberately wrecked a family. He did not have the least concern for the child's future, which is additional proof of his lack of humanity, his lack of feelings,' said the prosecutor. 'What a contrast to his self-pity.'

   Heinrich said W had continued to speak insultingly about al-Shirbini to the psychologist long after the killing.

   'That leaves me almost speechless,' said Heinrich.

   W admitted last week that he hated non-Germans and Muslims in general.

   Prosecutor Heinrich said a statement from W, read aloud last week in court, had not even been an admission of guilt, but aired anew W's belief that he had been treated unfairly by the court in the criminal-insult case and had been in a 'funny mood.'

   In the statement, W had only said he was sorry because he faced consequences.

   'There was not one word about the tragedy he caused,' said the prosecutor, adding that W had never even apologized to al-Shirbini's family which shows 'he still does not grasp the harm he did.'

   The prosecutor rejected the view of the defence that W had acted in the heat of the moment, saying, 'He knew what he was doing and acted with the coldness of ice.'