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The accused couple with lawyers at the beginning of the trial in the courtroom of the criminal justice building in Hamburg
Photo: Marcus Brandt / picture alliance / dpa
A story straight out of a crime thriller: a married couple from Hamburg searched the internet for a hitman, but the plan didn't work out.
Now both are in court.
A trial against a couple for attempted incitement to murder began in Hamburg's district court on Thursday.
According to the indictment, the 51-year-old businessman and the 49-year-old doctor are said to have placed a corresponding order on a Darknet website and have already sent the operator Bitcoins worth around 14,000 euros.
The reason was probably a custody battle
Accordingly, the couple wanted to murder the woman's former partner, with whom she has a daughter, against the background of a dispute over custody.
According to the public prosecutor's office, however, the Darknet forum was only an offer of fraud by unknown criminals who merely pretended to be mediators of contract killings.
The operators of the site kept the bitcoins deposited via a trust company without providing anything in return.
According to the indictment, the two accused initially sent the website operators a photo and the Hamburg address of the victim together with their order in January of this year.
When there was no reaction by mid-March, they turned to another user in a forum belonging to the platform for advice, to whom they also gave the name and address of the woman's former partner.
However, this was also part of the fraud, so that an assassination order was still not carried out.
FBI gave clues
According to a court spokesman, the investigations against the couple started with a tip from the FBI, which informed the Federal Criminal Police Office.
At the start of the trial on Thursday, the defendants' defense referred in a statement to their client's mental illness.
On the next day of the hearing, the accused is to give a personal statement in more detail.
The couple is accused of attempted incitement to murder in two cases because of the initiation attempts on the Darknet site.
Dates were initially set for the trial against the two until February 2023.
zob/afp
