‘Veil martyr’ murder trial opens in Germany under threat of fatwa
London, 26 October 2009: Alexander W, a Russian-born German citizen, shuffled into court in Dresden swaddled like a mummy: a baseball cap, a hood, sunglasses, a scarf covering his mouth.
The 28-year-old man, accused of murdering a young Egyptian woman in an extraordinary courtroom stabbing, was hiding his identity for good reason – a fatwa has been put on his head and German authorities fear he could become the victim of anger across the Arab world.
“Acting out of naked hate against non-Europeans and Muslims, whom he believed did not have the right to live, the accused man exploited the situation in the courtroom in order to extinguish the lives of two people,” said the state prosecutor Frank Heinrich, who will in the course of an 11-day trial argue that Alexander W should be sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering Marwa El-Shirbini, a 31-year-old pharmacist, and attempting to kill her husband, Elwi Okaz.
Alexander W did not enter a plea and turned his back to the court.
About 200 police, including rooftop marksmen, have been assigned to guard the courthouse. All other trials have been moved out of the building and everyone entering it is subject to strict body checks.
The paradox was immediately apparent to the 20 journalists invited from Egypt by the German Government to watch the trial: had there been an airport-style metal detector in place three months ago, the accused would never have been able to smuggle a long kitchen knife into the courtroom. Now the security measures are designed to protect the killer’s life
The case began on a childrens’ playground in Dresden in the summer of 2008. Alexander W was occupying a swing, smoking. Marwa Al-Shirbini wanted to place her two year old on the swing. Alexander W reacted with a torrent of abuse, calling her a terrorist, an Islamicist and a prostitute.
That evening, Marwa agreed with her husband, who was studying for his doctorate in micro-biology in Germany, that they should press charges. Evidence was duly taken by the police, Alexander W found guilty of racial abuse, and fined. But the man, who emigrated from the Russian town of Perm in 2003, appealed – he wanted his day in court.
By the time the case came to court last July, Marwa was three months pregnant. It was expected to be a routine hearing and she had brought her young boy along, and her husband for support. There was no policeman in the room.
She had just finished her testimony when, according to the prosecutor’s indictment, Alexander W took three strides across the courtroom floor and stabbed her 18 times. Mr Okaz was the first to react and pulled at Alexander W’s arm. The killer turned away briefly from the bleeding woman who was slipping to the ground, fighting for breath, and dug his knife 16 times into her husband.
After several minutes, a policeman arrived on the scene and shot Marwa’s husband rather than the actual assailant. Today Mr Okaz entered the courtroom on crutches; the policeman’s bullet had ripped tendons on his leg.
The Arab world reacted with fury. In Cairo and in Alexandria, the home city of Marwa and her husband, there were fierce demonstrations outside the German embassy and German institutions. The protests spread to Karachi in Pakistan, where women held up placards denouncing the West and calling for justice for the “headscarf martyr”, and on to Iran.
“The Egyptians wanted to see the death sentence imposed on the murderer,” says Aktham Suliman, correspondent of Al Jazeera, the television channel which first broadcast detailed news of the case.
Defence lawyer Michael Sturm argues that the international tension surrounding the trial will compromise its objectivity. “It’s poison for the trial,” he said.
Although a court psychiatrist has proclaimed Alexander W mentally fit to stand trial, Mr Sturm is expected to plead that his client was confused and disturbed. Mr W was allowed to take on German citizenship because, like many Russian emigres, he has distant ethnic German roots. Even so, he apparently spoke poor German and led an isolated life, drinking heavily, according to the indictment, living on unemployment benefit and addicted to computer games. No link to an active neo-Nazi group has been found.
The German authorities fear a repetition of the riots that were staged against Danish and Scandinavian institutions after the publication of newspaper cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005. That triggered huge diplomatic ructions, an economic boycott and a debate in the West about the limits of self censorship, and sent journalists into hiding.
This time, Arab newspapers have identified Marwa’s wearing of the headscarf as the reason for her killing – that is, they believe she was killed for her religion. And they hold the German authorities responsible for lax security.
The fatwa has been issued by a Sheik Ihab Adli Abu al-Madjd in a video clip circulated on the internet. The sheik calls on all Muslims living in Germany to take vengeance and “receive the award of Allah”. The German authorities have been taking it seriously and considered switching the trial to Stuttgart-Stammheim, where a bomb-proof courtroom was built to try the Red Army Faction terrorists in the 1970s.
Instead, a high wall of bullet-proof glass has been installed to separate spectators from the hearings, and a special corridor has been constructed so that no-one disguised as a cleaner or court official can cross the path of the accused.
The German authorities, aware that hostile sentiment was stoked by the regional media at the time of the Danish cartoons, has set up a special information unit to guide visiting Arab journalists through German criminal law. The Egyptian ambassador was in court, accompanied by a delegation that included the president of the Egyptian chamber of lawyers and the state prosecutor of Alexandria. The family of Marwa, who are appearing as co-plaintiffs, have been assigned an Egyptian lawyer as well as a German team of counsels.
The trial will continue until November 11 in courtroom 0.84, only two minutes walk from the courtroom where Marwa Al-Shirbini died in front of her young son.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk
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