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Police car at the scene of the crime in Neukölln
Photo: Paul Zinken / dpa
Three and a half months after a knife attack on two girls in a Berlin elementary school, the public prosecutor's office is seeking a permanent admission of the suspect to a psychiatric hospital. At the district court of the capital, a corresponding application had been submitted in a so-called security procedure, the authority said. The 38-year-old was mentally ill, according to a preliminary psychiatric expert report.
On May 3, the man had stabbed two schoolgirls aged seven and eight with a kitchen knife in the playground of a Protestant elementary school in the Neukölln district, who were playing there. Both were critically injured and had to undergo emergency surgery. The suspect was arrested near the school grounds and admitted to the crime.
According to the prosecutor's office, the man reported at the time of his arrest that voices had ordered him to kill the two girls. He was then provisionally placed in a psychiatric hospital. There were indications of a possible mental illness of the suspect caused by drug use, the investigating authorities said at the time.
This initial diagnosis will be confirmed by a preliminary psychiatric report, the Berlin public prosecutor's office said. Accordingly, the accused was in a psychotic state at the time of the crime due to a mental illness and is likely to be incapable of guilt.
A conviction in a normal criminal trial is therefore "not to be expected". For this reason, a precautionary procedure had been requested. The Berlin Regional Court will discuss the corresponding application and the opening of the proceedings. There was no date for this at first.
kfr/AFP