Berlin. A woman is fatally injured in a knife attack in Zehlendorf. Members of an extended family gather in front of a clinic.
- In Berlin-Zehlendorf, a 50-year-old man killed his wife with a knife
- The perpetrator is the ex-husband of the 36-year-old victim
- The police assume that this was a so-called femicide
Once again, a woman in Berlin has been killed by her ex-partner. Once again, the city is in shock. And once again, the phenomenon of femicide is being discussed. According to information from the police, the 36-year-old was Knife attack succumbed to their injuries not far from the Zehlendorf S-Bahn station.
After the mother of four children was seriously stabbed and cut on the sidewalk in front of her house on Hampstead Street at around 8.30 p.m. on Wednesday evening, rescue workers were able to resuscitate her on site. However, she died after an emergency operation at the nearby Charité Campus Benjamin Franklin. Homicide Squad of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) and collected evidence at the crime scene until the early hours of the morning. Witnesses to the bloody crime and local residents received pastoral care.
Knife attack in Berlin-Zehlendorf: Suspected perpetrator is said to be husband
The alleged perpetrator is the 50-year-old ex-Husband of the victim. He is said to have ambushed his former partner on the doorstep and waited for her, only to attack and stab her out of the blue. According to Morgenpost information, the victim was alone and his tormentor defenseless delivered.
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According to initial findings, the police assume that this was a crime of passion, a so-called femicide, allegedly due to “injured honor.” In other words, an act by a man as revenge on his former wife, who left him, as a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office confirmed to this editorial team. The perpetrator and the victim are Lebanese and part of a Extended familyTogether they have four underage children aged between eight and 15, who are now to be placed with relatives. According to media reports, around 50 people gathered outside the hospital after the incident. The public prosecutor’s office did not comment on the matter, but said: “A clan connection cannot be confirmed.”
Public prosecutor’s spokeswoman Katrin Häußer told this newspaper: “As far as the motive is concerned, we can also say that we assume that the perpetrator was motivated by the separation in his Honor hurt. In order to restore this, he decided to kill his ex-wife.” A classic femicide. Femicide is a legally controversial term from sociology that describes the killing of girls and women because of their gender. The most common form of femicide is the killing of women out of hatred by a partner or ex-partner. The killing of the 36-year-old is the fifth such incident within a very short period of time. Within around four weeks, four women were victims of femicide in the capital between the end of May and the end of June. In 2023, there were officially a total of eleven incidents in Berlin.
Man has previously been violent towards his wife
According to the public prosecutor’s office, there had already been several cases of domestic violence against the woman by the man during the marriage. The woman eventually separated and also obtained a protection order from the court and a restraining order. The alleged perpetrator should not have approached the 36-year-old and should not have known where his ex-wife lived. However, the ex-husband ambushed her on her doorstep on Wednesday, it was said.
It is a common problem that conspicuous ex-partners often do not comply with the police “Femicides and honour killings are a growing problem in our society, and yet it is difficult in the political arena to create framework conditions to better protect women at risk,” says Benjamin Jendro, spokesman for the Berlin police union GdP. “Our colleagues are constantly reaching their limits when it comes to getting victims of domestic violence or stalking out of the danger zone as quickly as possible.” The legal options for expelling perpetrators, banning them from entering, and taking them into custody are too few in view of the number of places in women’s shelters and often fall far short, says Jendro.
Number of incidents also increases in Berlin
Victims’ associations repeatedly criticise the fact that femicides are not recognised and condemned as such in court. They therefore assume that the figures are much higher than officially reported. Statistically, a woman in Germany experiences violence from her (ex-)partner every four minutes. Last year, according to victims’ associations, a woman was killed by her partner or ex-partner every other day in Germany. Incidents are also increasing in Berlin. In the categories of “partner and family violence” recorded by police statistics, the Criminal offenses most recently increased from 17,263 in 2022 to 18,784 in 2023. Around 13,000 of the victims, or almost 70 percent, were female.
Suggestions are repeatedly made to improve the situation of women and girls at risk. These include interdisciplinary Case conferences: In order to prevent information leaks, the police, the relevant district authorities and the advice centers should be brought together at the same table. Experts also recommend increasing the duration of the so-called expulsion from two weeks to four weeks in the future. Expulsion is a police measure, and in such cases the offender must leave the shared apartment.
An increase in the duration would give affected women more time to seek help from counselling centres and lawyers and also to submit applications for further Protective measures to the family court. However, the processing time for such applications often takes longer than two weeks. In addition, there are calls for violations of the contact and proximity ban to be penalized more severely in the future and to be punished as administrative offenses.
