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Sign at the entrance to the Berlin Regional Court
Photo: Taylan Gökalp/ picture alliance/dpa
More than a year and a half after a deadly knife attack on a 13-year-old boy in a Berlin park, the district court sentenced the accused to life imprisonment in an appeal for murder.
The chamber spoke to 42-year-old Gökhan Ü.
also guilty of dangerous bodily harm on Tuesday.
The man who stabbed the boy, who he did not know, in the heart after insulting each other, was sentenced to twelve years in prison for manslaughter and dangerous bodily harm in the first trial.
The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) overturned this decision on revision of the accessory prosecution.
»Reacting excessively to an insignificant everyday occurrence«
The act was "to be rated as murder for base motives," said the presiding judge, Ingrid Wagner-Weßel, in Berlin.
It was a killing "for an ultimately harmless action".
The accused and the 13-year-old met by chance at the end of October 2020 in a tunnel under the S-Bahn at Monbijoupark near Museum Island.
The boy looked at a cell phone and almost bumped into the accused's companion, it said.
There was a brief exchange of words.
The accused then drew a knife and "reacted excessively to an insignificant everyday occurrence," said the public prosecutor in his plea.
The man wanted to "teach the boy a lesson."
The victim, who fled to Germany with his family from a refugee camp in Syria when he was seven, died in the park.
The accused had also seriously injured a then 22-year-old companion of the boy.
Prosecutors and joint plaintiffs
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the boy's parents
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pleaded murder in the current trial.
The defense requested that the appeal be dismissed.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
"We didn't want to flee a country at war so that our child would be killed here," said the mother after the pleadings.
wit/mel/dpa/AFP