How is a person to be judged from a legal point of view who, in a delusion, murdered three people and seriously injured numerous others? The public prosecutor’s office has left no doubts, they are calling for the knife man from Würzburg to be housed in a closed facility – for an unlimited period of time. If the man continues to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and is judged to be dangerous, he will not be released. After three months of negotiations, the district court of Würzburg agreed with this view of things.
The presiding judge Thomas Schuster accuses the accused, among other things, of murder in three counts and attempted murder in six counts. The day of the deed will stay in the memory of the people of Würzburg for a long time, he says. The suspect killed three unknown women with a knife, six people were seriously injured and three others slightly injured. A police officer who was attacked suffered no physical injuries. For all the injured, says Schuster, everything changed that day. But the accused should not be sentenced to imprisonment, says the presiding judge. Instead, he is placed in a psychiatric hospital. He is innocent. He suffers from schizophrenia. He was driven “by voices in his head”.
A simulation of madness is out of the question
The chief public prosecutor, Judith Henkel, had already seen it that way in her plea. She is convinced that the Somali, whose exact age is not known to the German authorities but who is believed to be around 30, committed his crimes because of his mental illness. At the time of the crime, June 25, 2021, he could not see that he was guilty of a great deal. Two psychiatric experts had judged it that way, independently of one another. Accordingly, voices in the head are said to have encouraged the man to do his job. The refugee felt persecuted by the secret service and felt unfairly treated in Germany and acted out of hatred. One of the experts at the trial said that the probability that he would commit further highly aggressive acts without the appropriate treatment was eminent.
The simulation of a madness? consider it out of the question. It is highly likely that the accused felt controlled and was “acutely delusional” on the day of the crime. The ability to inspect was therefore abolished on June 25, 2021. His intention on that fateful summer day? “To kill as many people as possible,” the prosecutor is convinced.
The co-plaintiffs, seven in all, have largely agreed with the Attorney General’s Office. One of them pointed out that it was important to everyone that it was a psychosis that triggered this crime, and not the origin of the accused.
The defense does not fundamentally question all of this, after all, the Somali confessed to the crimes at the beginning of this security procedure. One of the accused’s lawyers, Hanjo Schrepfer, has become one of the faces of this trial. After taking over the defense of the knife man from Barbarossaplatz, he was insulted in the worst possible way in emails; initially 20 such letters came a day, with threats and curses. Now he’s become a reason why this major trial happened faster than many expected. Schrepfer was one of several parties involved in the proceedings who had become infected with Corona. In order to minimize the risk that more and more people would become infected and that the process might have to pause longer, the presiding judge had brought the judgment date forward.
His colleague Tilman Michler speaks of an “extraordinarily painful procedure” on this last day of negotiations. On behalf of the accused, he apologizes to those affected. And that’s also important to him: These proceedings did not provide any indications of an Islamist background to the crime. Not even for misogyny on the part of the accused. And even with legal supervision, it is very likely that his actions could not have been prevented. The defense also pleads for placement in a psychiatric hospital.
Three women died from stab wounds
The accused – slim figure, jeans, sweatshirt – has one more opportunity on this last day of the trial to comment on the crime. He agrees with his defense attorney’s account, he says.
A tense silence had fallen over the hall as the second day of the trial showed what Abdirahman J. had done: walking between the shelves of the Woolworth with a drawn knife, leaving a few men unnoticed and then chasing made women. Again and again you saw this big knife with which he stabbed the women from top to bottom. You could see how they collapsed, how he attacked one from behind who had tried to run away in panic.
A woman was seen struggling with her plastic shopping basket against this man, who was attacking her obsessively. She had her back against the wall, the shopping basket was the only thing that separated her before death. She was lucky – three other women weren’t. They died from the stab wounds of the 33-year-old Somali. Four women were seriously injured, including a man at a bus stop. He didn’t even stop at a little girl. He had murdered his mother in the department store, followed the fleeing child and seriously injured it. Just because several brave men rallied around the attacker, he couldn’t keep killing.
The presiding judge had warned the audience in the hall that they should consider whether they wanted to watch the videos from the surveillance camera in the department store. You can’t get them out of your head. Months after the crime, the attacker was asked what he was actually up to: “Battles” he said – in German.
The defendant himself had preferred not to look at the pictures at all. He asked to go outside. But he had no choice, he had to stay in the hall. Two experts independently attested to a severe mental disorder: paranoid schizophrenia. From the beginning of the process he was considered not guilty.
It was almost unbearable for the victims. Some of them didn’t believe him, thinking he was just faking it. But then there was a man in the courtroom whose illness was obvious. He stared at the tabletop, barely raising his eyes. Already on the first day he had apologized to his victims. It didn’t help them.
As a rule, the SZ does not report on the ethnic, religious or national affiliations of suspected criminals. We only deviate from this if there is a justified public interest line agreed in the Press Code away. This can be the case with extraordinary crimes such as terrorist attacks or capital crimes, or with crimes committed by a larger group (such as New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne). A public interest also exists in the case of a search call or if the biography of a suspect is relevant to the criminal offence. We decide on a case-by-case basis and are generally cautious in order not to stir up prejudice against minorities.