(sda) The presiding judge said on Thursday when the verdict was announced in Bern that the higher court actually found a 13-year prison sentence appropriate. But the court was unable to increase the sentence due to the lack of a so-called cross-appeal by the public prosecutor.
The man’s attack took place in May 2019 in the Emmental. The victim is a 19-year-old young woman who was born male.
At the age of nine she realized that she was “not living in the right body”, as she said in an interview with the newspaper “20 Minuten” a year ago. Little by little she began to dress and make-up feminine and rebelled more and more against her father.
After coming home late one evening, the morning after she lay asleep in the family room’s living room. Suddenly the Iraqi kneeled over her and yelled at her: “Are you gay?”, “You are gay”. Then he stabbed several times with a kitchen knife.
The young woman was able to push her father away with her legs and, covered in blood, sought help from neighbors. The thyroid gland was severed, the windpipe had a hole and it had lost one to one and a half liters of blood. According to the higher court, the injuries were not life threatening.
“But not much was missing,” said the presiding judge. Scars on the young woman’s neck still bear witness to the attack. The higher court process came because the Iraqi had appealed against the first instance judgment of the regional court of Emmental-Oberaargau.
The Iraqi denied his perpetrator from the start. His defense lawyer pleaded before the first and second instance for acquittal in case of doubt for the accused. Among other things, he pointed out that, according to a forensic medical report, it is not certain whether there is external influence or whether the then psychologically unstable trans woman injured herself.
The court found the hypothesis of an aborted suicide attempt to be “absurd”. All crime scene evidence supported the crime version of the victim, said the presiding judge. Other evidence, such as testimony, speak in favor of the young woman’s version.
Overall, the result is a “picture without relevant gaps,” said Chief Justice Fritz Aebi. “We are convinced that the accused is the perpetrator”.
The perpetrator’s unscrupulousness, which is necessary for a conviction as an attempted murder, was given, said the chief judge. The actions of today’s trans woman did not fit into the Iraqi worldview. “Extremely selfish,” he said, decided to take action and proceeded brutally and insidiously.
The representative of the Bern Public Prosecutor’s Office asked the High Court to confirm the first-instance judgment. At the start of the trial on Tuesday, she spoke of a poorly integrated man who had noticed that he was losing control of his son or daughter. He couldn’t handle her transsexuality.
The court also ordered that the man be expelled from the country after serving his prison sentence for twelve years. He has to pay his daughter a satisfaction of 20,000 francs. He is a recognized asylum seeker in Switzerland who is dependent on social assistance.
He hardly speaks German. The judgment can still be referred to the Federal Supreme Court.
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