Murder trial: "Disposed like a piece of dirt"

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The policeman shows pictures of a forest on the monitor, he calls it the "dead body".

Bare trees can be seen, it is winter, December 9th, 2018. A concrete cover covered with leaves can be seen on the ground, it closes a shaft.

The next picture shows the interior from a bird's eye view: a curved body, half decayed, lies there.

The pants and shoes are still recognizable.

It is the corpse of 16-year-old Mezgin N. - the one who put it there threw earth and leaves on it.

“It was disposed of like a piece of dirt,” says the criminal investigator Jörg A. when he presented his investigation report in court.

"We rarely have it so undignified."

The trial of Hashem N., Mezgin's father, the alleged murderer, began this Thursday in the Aschaffenburg district court.

The drama of a family story unfolded in the hall in which flight, violence, family relationships and the clash of different cultures play a role.

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The focus is on a woman who dressed and lived and loved like others in Aschaffenburg and who, according to the investigations of the public prosecutor, had to pay for this with her death.

Afterwards, her father or brother murdered her with three stab wounds because she had "turned to western lifestyles" and the "very conservative father" disapproved of this.

But on the first day of the trial, the prosecution's construct began to shake: there was no blood on the corpse that would have flowed from stab wounds.

The knife was never found.

It is also not certain who was actually there when Mezgin was murdered.

"We have no reliable findings"

"It is purely speculative, we have no reliable information about what happened," said the officer A. quite openly about the course of the crime - and thus thwarted the charge, according to which it appeared to be established that Hashem and his son Abdallahed N. were 16 Killed year old with three stab wounds.

The criminal proceedings surrounding the dead Syrian could thus develop into a lengthy circumstantial process.

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What is clear is that Hashem N., 46, tried to kill Shekho R. four weeks after the alleged murder of Mezgin.

He called him on June 2, 2017 at 1.30 a.m. and pretended to talk to him.

The two men strolled through Aschaffenburg at night for several hours until Hashem N. suddenly pulled a pocket knife on the banks of the Main and suddenly stabbed Shekho in the neck.

The 23-year-old man fled and shouted loudly through the city until he pounded on the door of a house so hard that the pane of glass was broken.

He survived the attack while Hashem N. fled towards Turkey that night.

The defendant is led into the courtroom

Source: dpa

The next day he should have served a nine-month prison sentence - for mistreating his daughter.

It was not until 2020 that he was arrested and extradited in Istanbul.

There he had a second center of life: Hashem N. is married to another woman with whom he has three children.

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When reading the indictment, the public prosecutor said: Since Mezgin had "turned to western lifestyles, there were repeated conflicts with her very conservative father".

It had been simmering for a long time.

Just one year after arriving in Germany, the school contacted the district administration.

Mezgin appeared in class with injuries caused by her father.

She was then examined in a children's clinic and placed in a “standby care center”.

But just a month later, she returned to her family.

This pattern was repeated over the following months.

Mezgin left the dysfunctional family but quickly returned.

In her father's eyes, she dressed too scarcely, wore tight tops and trousers.

He hit her with the palm of his hand and fist.

She chatted on Facebook, Hashem beat her up with a belt.

Then she had a boyfriend, Shekho R. She loved him, had sex.

When the father found out, he hit her again.

And he demanded that the two now marry.

At least two weeks before the crime, the prosecutor said, Hashem N. decided to kill his daughter.

The investigators make the purchase of a shelf for the trunk of a Peugeot.

He borrowed this from a friend.

On the day of the date, May 4, 2017, he picked Mezgin up from school and drove her through the area until he stopped in a forest near Aschaffenburg.

According to the findings of the prosecution, he then hit Mezgin completely suddenly and tied and gagged her.

He put the body in the Peugeot and disposed of it in another forest several kilometers away.

Then he exchanged the shelf to cover up possible traces.

At least that's what Abdallahed N. said.

He was 13 years old at the time of the crime and cannot be prosecuted.

Hashem N. remains silent about the allegations to this day.

On the same day, the father and Mezgin's brother appeared at the police station and filed a missing person report.

On May 15, 2017, strollers found Mezgin N.'s backpack on the banks of the Main.

The investigators took pads, chocolate, school books, pens, ten artificial fingernails and lip liner out of the bag.

The police were looking for Mezgin with everything they had.

But it wasn't until a walker happened to find the body in December 2018 that the investigation really got going.

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Because shortly after the find, Abdallahed confessed to the police and claimed to have been the one who wielded the knife.

Only: is that true, or does he want to protect his father?

Today Mezgin's brother is said to be living in Istanbul;

his interrogation was videotaped and will be shown during the trial.

The officer Jörg A. was present at the interrogation.

"I have seldom seen a young man who was so disrespectful and violent and full of criminal energy," says the officer.

He had known the family for years.

The more they found, the more puzzling it became

The then 13-year-old was known to the police for a long time.

The boy broke in, stole, and started a fire.

Abdallahed once said to a teacher that “when he was nine years old in Syria he killed a young man with a stone,” the policeman said.

Which is worse: if that were true - or if a child boasted of a murder that had not been committed?

The more the officers found out, the more puzzling it became.

Mezgin's body was autopsied and examined for age.

After that, she was more likely between 19 and 20 years old, not even 16. Witnesses said that she and her father kissed like lovers.

The police were now so suspicious that they commissioned a DNA parentage assessment to clarify whether Hashem was her father at all.

The result is not yet available.

Your mother protested this;

she has since divorced Hashem N.

Jörg A. states in court that this case takes him away.

A year before her death, Mezgin told the officer that she was afraid her father might kill her.

"For me as an investigator it was very macabre and very depressing that it turned out exactly like that," says Jörg A. "But she kept going back to the family because she wanted to be close."