More than a year and a half after a fatal knife attack on a 13-year-old boy in a Berlin park, the capital's district court has sentenced the 42-year-old defendant to life imprisonment in an appeal for murder.
The chamber spoke Gökhan Ü.
also guilty of dangerous bodily harm on Tuesday.
The trial was about an appeal by Mohamed A.'s mother against a judgment from May last year.
The Berlin court had Ü.
sentenced to twelve years in prison for manslaughter and dangerous bodily harm.
However, the judges denied base motives and therefore refrained from a conviction for murder.
The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) objected to this and therefore lifted the conviction for manslaughter and the associated total sentence.
Another jury chamber of the regional court now had to clarify whether the murder characteristic of base motives was present.
The act was "to be rated as murder for base motives," said the presiding judge, Ingrid Wagner-Weßel, on Tuesday.
It was a killing "for an ultimately harmless action".
With its decision, the chamber fully complied with the demands of the public prosecutor's office and the joint plaintiffs - the boy's parents.
The defense requested that the manslaughter verdict be maintained and the appeal dismissed.
The trigger was a war of words
According to the judgment of the first instance, the escalation had begun when a woman who Ü.
accompanied, had to avoid the thirteen-year-old.
A battle of words then ensued between the accused and the group of four around the later victim.
Ü.
then pulled out a knife and stabbed the thirteen-year-old, who died from the 10-centimetre-deep stab in his heart.
The defendant seriously injured another young man who tried to hold him down and confront him about the attack.
The event happened in October 2020 in an underpass in Monbijoupark in the Mitte district near Museum Island.