Processes
Dead people in the Weser – defendants remain silent at the start of the trial
One of the three defendants (M) is led into the courtroom by judicial officers before the trial begins. photo
© Sina Schuldt/dpa
They have already been punished for other crimes. They could not be proven to have committed murder. Now there is a new process. But the defendants remain silent.
The defendants had already been convicted by the regional court 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 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. He is said to have tried to market the 19-year-old as a prostitute together with his best friend at the time and his former partner – even though the victim 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; 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. The acquittal of the murder charge applies.