Only 35 inches deep was the hole in which a policeman found Susanna. Her body lay on the edge of a business park in Wiesbaden, buried beside train tracks. It was covered with soil and brushwood. The officer almost walked past, but a clothing label shimmered white through the undergrowth. So he looked closer. This is how the Wiesbaden police chief described it last year.
The discovery of the corpse turned a search for a missing person into a criminal case, which was soon to occupy the whole of the Republic. It was fast about fundamentals. For example, the police dealing with missing persons. Or the German asylum law, the case was quickly instrumentalized - such as the AfD, which provoked a minute of silence in the Bundestag.
Because suspicious is Ali B., a rejected asylum seeker. The prosecution has now filed charges against him and an accomplice. The investigators detail the allegations against Ali B. in a press release on four pages. Three charges have been filed by the prosecutor.
Ali B. has admitted killing Susanna
Susanna met Ali B. accordingly on May 23, 2018 near an asylum shelter in Wiesbaden-Erbenheim. It was after midnight when Ali B. forced the girl to intercourse. Susanna resisted, Ali B. taken a branch, choked or beaten. Out of fear, according to the investigators, Susanna let the rape happen.
After that, she threatened to go to the police. That's why Ali B. had been choking Susanna from behind for several minutes until she was not agitated.
In addition, the investigators accuse Ali B. heavy robbery - and the abuse of an eleven year old. In April 2018, he lured her to his room in the asylum shelter, threw her onto the bed and raped her. Just over a month later, he and a 14-year-old allegedly raped the girl again, outside, near the asylum shelter.
A third time, the child is said to have been abused sometime between late April and mid-May. In a wooded area in Wiesbaden-Medenbach, the 14-year-old and a younger brother Ali Bs are said to have twice passed on the child. The younger brother is according to the investigators not criminal. Against the 14-year-old was also charged, he denies the allegations.
Ali B. has already confessed to killing Susanna. He denies a rape and the abuse of the girl.
Shortly after Susanna's violent death, Ali B. fled to Iraq with his family. The escape succeeded, although on the airline tickets other names were given than on the also presented at the airport Iraqi identity cards. The passport photos were adjusted, but not the names. However, airlines are not obliged to do so.
More at SPIEGEL +
Shortly after the escape, there was a spectacular retrieval. Kurdish security forces arrested the 21-year-old, he was brought to Germany without extradition. Federal Police Chief Dieter Romann personally flew to Iraq with special forces and brought Ali B. back. "Hero Policemen" called him the "Bild" newspaper.
But experts, including from the Ministry of Justice, had doubts about the action. Meanwhile, the prosecutor investigates Frankfurt for deprivation of liberty against Romann and ten other officials. Romann described the allegations as outrageous.
Getty Images
Dieter Romann, Chief of the Federal Police, at a reception in Berlin in September 2018
This also belongs to the case Susanna: criticism of the authorities. The girl's mother accused the investigators of having reacted too late. The 14-year-old had been missing for five days before the police had located her cell phone. Possible errors in the investigations were discussed in parliamentary committees in Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate. The Hessian Minister of the Interior Peter Beuth (CDU) defended the police.
The handling of Ali B's asylum application also raised questions. He was rejected, in January 2017, he complained. This action was never substantiated, the Wiesbaden administrative court did not deal with the process. The court president later defended himself by pointing out that in 2017, more than 5,000 lawsuits against asylum claims had been received, the old stock had been in more than 1,600 cases.
These would be prioritized according to criteria such as crime or illness. In the case of Ali B., however, the court had no evidence of conspicuous behavior. Ali B. was already known to the police, for example because of robbery and assault. But the threads ran nowhere, nobody had the 21-year-olds on the screen.
At least that, that's for sure, has changed in the meantime.