Revision process
19-year-old sunk in Weser – new sentence imposed
The three defendants (l, front l and back r) sit with their lawyers in the courtroom before the trial begins. photo
© Sina Schuldt/dpa
The body of a young woman was found in a canal on the Weser in 2020. A court convicts two men and a woman. After an appeal decision, the case was heard again.
In the proceedings for one in the The Verden regional court has once again passed a verdict on the woman who was sunk in the Weser river. The court revised its sentence downwards on Tuesday, as a court spokeswoman announced after the appeal process.
The main defendant must therefore be imprisoned for seven years and nine months. His ex-wife received a prison sentence of two and a half years, his accomplice has to go to prison for three years and five months. The decision on the sentence is not yet final.
The regional court had already convicted the defendants in 2021. At the time, the Germans could not be proven to have committed murder as accused. The court could not clarify how the 19-year-old victim died. An inland boatman found her in a lock canal in the Nienburg district in spring 2020 – tied to a concrete slab without clothes and sunk in the river.
In the 2021 trial, the defendants were punished for other offenses, the main defendant was sentenced to eight years in prison for, among other things, the serious forced prostitution of the victim. The then 41-year-old is said to have tried to market the young woman as a prostitute together with his best friend and his former partner – even though the young woman was unable to determine her own sexuality due to paranoid schizophrenia.
The then 54-year-old co-defendant received a prison sentence of three years and nine months in the first trial, while the then 40-year-old co-defendant was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison. The public prosecutor and defense appealed against the guilty verdict. In May, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that the sentences must be renegotiated, but the regional court’s ruling is largely legally binding.
In the appeal process, the regional court said it lowered the sentence for all three defendants. The chamber took into account that the crime had taken place a long time ago. In addition, the living conditions of the two co-defendants have now improved.