The reading of the indictment goes quickly.

The public prosecutor only needs a good two minutes to present her allegations.

In this way, she draws attention to the immediate core of what is happening: two brothers are said to have killed their older sister.

The two 23 and 27-year-old men are accused of choking, choking and "slitting her throat" the young woman on July 13 last year.

Julia Schaaf

Editor in the "Life" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

  • Follow I follow

Compared to the reporting in the run-up to the trial, that seems downright meager.

Many details from the life of the victim and the alleged perpetrators have long been known.

As early as the summer, the media published photos from a Berlin train station surveillance camera showing two men with a large suitcase, allegedly containing the body of the 34-year-old Afghan woman.

"Modern lifestyle" as a motive for murder?

Maryam H. has lived in Berlin since 2015 and lived in a small apartment in a refugee camp.

Their children are now ten and fourteen years old.

Her two younger brothers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper researched at the time, helped raise her, but also feared her.

This Wednesday, the two men are sitting next to each other in the dock in one of the largest halls of the Berlin district court: the faces are difficult to see behind glass panes and masks.

The elder, Sayed Yousuf H., wears a gray hoodie on slouched shoulders.

Until his arrest, he lived in Donauwörth, Bavaria, and is the father of an illegitimate child.

The younger one, Seyed Mahdi H., has his hair cropped short over his ears and tied in a stubby ponytail at the back of his head.

He looks pale.

In media reports, he is associated with depression.

Meanwhile, a sentence is falling that makes it clear why this process is attracting so much attention: the brothers did not agree that their sister "pursued a partially more modern lifestyle," says the prosecutor in her indictment.

Maryam H. opposed the "requests and instructions" of the younger siblings.

In addition, she had a romantic relationship after her divorce.

And that although the brothers would have forbidden her contact with the new man.

Because there was talk of an "honor killing" last summer, because a debate on the term broke out in the middle of the Berlin state election campaign and the outrage overturned, Mirko Röder stands in front of the hall and talks to the journalists.

The lawyer, who introduces himself as the "speaker" for the younger brother's defense, speaks of a "prior conviction" and announces a lengthy, "conflict-ridden" process.

He says that in the case of Seyed Mahdi H. will be defended if he is acquitted: After all, there is neither a crime scene nor an act of crime, neither a weapon nor a motive.