WIESBADEN, Germany — An Iraqi man went on trial in Germany Tuesday accused of the rape and murder of a teenage girl that inflamed anti-immigrant tensions amid a mass influx of asylum seekers.
The accused, Ali Bashar, 22, left Germany for northern Iraq shortly after the May 2018 crime but was arrested and brought back in a mission joined personally by Germany’s federal police chief.
Bashar’s trial for the rape and murder of 14-year-old schoolgirl Susanna Maria Feldman started under tight security in Wiesbaden, the city where the killing took place. Around a dozen people held a vigil for the victim outside the courthouse.
Bashar has admitted the killing to police interrogators but denied the rape, meaning he already faces a likely life prison term, which in Germany usually translates to 15 years behind bars.
To Germany’s far right, Bashar, who is also accused of raping an 11-year-old girl in a separate case, has become a symbol of the threat allegedly posed by the wave of mostly Middle Eastern newcomers.
Before the trial, the anti-Islam Alternative for Germany (AfD) party again blamed Chancellor Angela Merkel and her grand coalition or “GroKo” government for Susanna’s death. “The problem isn’t ‘the right’ but the knife-man immigration caused by the GroKo that has caused ever more bloody crimes,” the party wrote in a Facebook post.
The AfD became the biggest opposition party when it entered parliament in late 2017, riding a wave of public anger over sexual assaults and other violent crimes committed by some recent migrants. In another case last year, the fatal stabbing of a German man in the eastern city of Chemnitz, allegedly by immigrants, sparked outbursts of mob violence in which far-right extremists hunted people of foreign appearance through the streets.
Shallow grave
Bashar, along with his parents and five siblings, first arrived in Germany in 2015, the year that saw the peak of the migrant influx which would bring more than one million people to Europe’s biggest economy.
His request for asylum was rejected in December 2016, but — in a case critics label as symptomatic of an overwhelmed and dysfunctional system — he obtained a temporary residence permit pending his appeal.
Merkel later conceded in a TV interview that “the case shows how important it is that people who don’t have residency rights quickly face a court and can be speedily sent back home”.
In May last year, Bashar allegedly beat, raped and strangled Susanna to death in a wooded area near his refugee shelter in Wiesbaden. — AFP
