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Defendant Bekim H. in court in January: "I'm sorry"
Photo: Olaf Wagner / imago images
Bekim H. looks at the girl's mother and sister.
Then the 42-year-old spoke for the first time before the 32nd Large Criminal Chamber of the Berlin Regional Court.
"I want to apologize," he says.
He speaks loud and clear, with a firm voice.
“I didn't mean for the girl to die.
I didn't mean to kill her.
I'm sorry."
The judges don't believe Bekim H.'s words.
According to her, he first raped and then strangled a 15-year-old schoolgirl in the Rummelsburger Bucht in Berlin on the night of August 5th, 2020.
The verdict: for life.
The accused had "a pronounced anti-sociality", says the presiding judge Matthias Schertz.
In her report, a psychiatrist spoke of psychopathy, an extreme form of dissocial personality disorder, which Bekim H. had developed at a young age.
In addition, there is congenital damage to his brain.
Nevertheless, the defendant was fully responsible for the girl's death.
At the time of the crime, his culpability was neither abolished nor significantly restricted, the court found.
Bekim H. has raped a woman before.
In 2001 he came to a forensic clinic for around 13 years.
At that time, a court acquitted him for incapacity and ordered him to be placed in the penal system.
In psychiatry he stood out for his aggressive behavior
"The measure basically didn't work at all," says Richter Schertz.
He quotes the psychiatric expert, according to which the years in the clinic were less a treatment than "a single crisis intervention."
Bekim H. also attracted attention in psychiatry because of his aggressive behavior.
He threatened to harm himself and others, hoarding drugs instead of taking them.
In 2014 he was released on parole, "which from today's perspective is a gross mistake," says the judge.
According to the Chamber, the defendant had succeeded in deceiving several people.
In the forensic clinic he was even able to "sharpen his ability to manipulate".
At some point he may have known how to present himself, what to say in order not to be considered dangerous anymore.
When he was free, he was looked after by experts - and successfully continued to deceive.
He was not allowed to consume drugs or alcohol, but did so anyway and, during regular checks, did not give up his urine, but that of his partner's child.
The court also mentions his supervisor, who knew about alcohol and drug use and still did not sound the alarm.
Schertz speaks of "this unspeakable social worker".
On August 5, 2020, Bekim H. met the 15-year-old at around 2 a.m. at the Ostkreuz S-Bahn station.
The girl had voluntarily gone to Rummelsburger Bucht with Bekim H.
Possibly to use drugs together.
"What exactly happened between the two could not be determined with absolute certainty."
The Chamber is convinced that there can be no question of consensual sex.
The student's torn clothes and marks on her body were evidence of this.
"The accused enforces his sexual desires by force," the court stated.
He portrayed death as a kind of accident
That Bekim H. not only tried to rape the student - as the indictment still says - but actually raped her, the defendant himself had stated on the tenth day of the trial in his admission to the court.
At the time, he had his defense stated that they had "had sex".
Bekim H. had portrayed the girl's death as a kind of accident.
He "slightly" choked the 15-year-old during sexual intercourse and "suddenly" she stopped moving.
The defense had suggested that she may have died of an epileptic fit.
The accused's admission was "unbelievable per se," says Judge Schertz now.
The head of forensic medicine at the Berlin Charité, Professor Michael Tsokos, had stated that it takes at least six minutes to kill a person by strangling.
Tsokos had also "completely convincingly" stated that there was no evidence of an epileptic seizure, according to the court.
The chamber assumes a murder with the intention of hiding.
It cannot be ruled out that Bekim H. decided to kill the 15-year-old during the rape, "perhaps because the girl screamed."
The question of culpability
Bekim H. had an organic brain disorder due to a fetal alcohol syndrome, as his alcoholic mother also drank during pregnancy.
But at the time of the offense, this disruption was "not a guide to action," the court said.
Bekim H. was also not so drunk or intoxicated that he could no longer control his behavior.
His behavior before and after the act testifies to this.
The chamber found that the psychiatrist had assumed in her preliminary written report that she was less responsible for guilt, but then held the accused as fully culpable in court.
Accordingly, Bekim H. knew exactly what he was doing, and his guilty capacity was not impaired.
This means that the prerequisite for re-placement in the forensic clinic is missing.
Bekim H. has to go to jail.