Little time? At the end of the text there is a summary.
When Mohammad A. thinks he is losing his life, Mehyaddin O. holds his mobile phone in the dark night: the camera is focused on the bleeding 20-year-old. You can hear beatings and screams, a man shouts, "I'll slaughter you now!" Mohammad A. is in mortal fear. He huddles on the outside wall of a run-down beverage market in a backyard in Essen-Steele, his arms protectively from his face.
He survives, badly injured, partially scalped.
Eight men and two women, who are said to have done this to him, are brought to the trial prelude from pre-trial detention in ten different prisons in the Ruhr area to the district court food. Three more male defendants have come, they are not in custody.
A hundred people guard the building, and two dozen judicial sergeants secure room N 001. Most defendants hide their faces behind magazines and folders. Nine of them are accused of attempted murder and dangerous assault, four are charged with aiding and abetting.
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One of them is Mehyaddin O., who filmed the act. He is 25 years old, a father a few months ago and in the witness protection program. His statements, which he made in interrogations of the attack on Mohammad A., helped the investigators reconstruct the act. But with his information, he has also put his life in danger. It can not be ruled out that relatives of the other defendants are looking for revenge. Several bodyguards - to keep their identity a secret, they carry storm masks - escort him to his place in the dock.
The co-defendants do not pay any attention to Mehyaddin O. Especially female relatives of the suspects crowd into the courtroom. Two other defendants have announced that they will also be fully involved in the ongoing proceedings.
According to the indictment, the 13 men and women decided to kill Mohammad A. insidiously and for low motives, because he had entered into a love affair with a classmate of the same age. However, at the age of 16, she was an Islamic rite and a so-called "gag" 2500 US dollars and a good 20 grams of gold, 21 carat, married to her mother's cousin.
Mother and aunt are said to have been the masterminds
During the night of May 31, last year, the defendants allegedly ambushed and attacked Mohammad A. in order to restore what she believed was the lost honor of the young woman. They were said to have hit Mohammad A. with truncheons and wooden slats, kicked him; one is said to have injured him with a knife.
Investigators have secured three cell phone videos documenting the crime. In their opinion, they leave no other conclusion than that the eleven men and two women resorted to vigilante justice.
Most of them had fled the civil war in Syria, came to Saxony-Anhalt and the Ruhr area between 2013 and 2015 as asylum seekers. They are almost all related and between 22 and 47 years old.
Masterminds are said to have been Muzgin M., the mother of the young woman, and her sister Gulistan A. When the secret couple's pictures appeared on Facebook, the family apparently regarded her honor as soiled. Who put the recordings on the net, is unclear. For the mother and aunt of the young woman, they were, according to the prosecution, the trigger to put an end to the forbidden love. In court, the mother cries incessantly.
"Despicable and at the lowest level"
The investigators are convinced that especially the mother, 39, and the aunt, 47, wanted to ensure justice according to their own laws. Although they knew, according to investigators, that the killing because of an exaggerated sense of honor is a motive that in German justice as "despicable and at the lowest level" applies.
According to the investigation file, the mother in Viersen and her aunt in Naumburg drummed up relatives: all were to come to Viersen to the family council. And the family came: from the Ruhr area, but also from Freyburg (Unstrut), Naumburg, Halle and Zeitz in Saxony-Anhalt.
Also Mehyaddin O., who last lived in Halle, was there. He described in interrogations how the family had planned the retribution, as allegedly in the apartment of the parents in Viersen had advised what to do to restore the honor: Mohammad A. cut out a "piece of meat", cut off his ear to drink his blood?
One of the suspects said in an interview that they had no other choice: The photos on Facebook had brought shame on the family. It was "quite normal" among Kurds to settle such matters without the involvement of the police.
"When it comes to honor, they are not interested in our laws"
Mehyaddin O. told investigators who was at the scene and who participated as in the act: Muzgin M. and Gulistan A., mother and aunt of the young woman, were therefore not at the scene. Nevertheless, the prosecutor sees the two as accomplices of a joint attempted murder.
Mohammad A. had to be operated on after the attack, he was in mortal danger. In the proceedings, the 20-year-old appears as a co-plaintiff. At trial, he and his family do not appear in the courtroom. A conscious decision, as his lawyer Aykan Akyildiz says. His client wanted to avoid any kind of provocation.
Akyildiz is convinced that there is no danger of revenge from his client and his family. As for the defendants, he is skeptical. "Legally, these people lack any inhibitions, and when it comes to honor, they are not interested in our laws." The shocking thing about this case is that heads of families made a death sentence, but found enough relatives who made that decision. He could imagine that the verdict is not expected to be over in mid-July.
In summary: At the district court food the process against 13 members of a Syrian family started. The eleven men and two women are said to have tried to murder a young man who had a relationship with a married woman in the family. The prosecution assumes that the defendants regarded the family honor as soiled and wanted to restore it through the attack .