Right at the beginning of the trial, the judge addresses the accused in an urgent tone.

"If there is something to confess, it will be taken into account here," says Chairman Volker Wagner.

The man sitting across from him in a beige sweater is accused of killing an acquaintance in his room in a refugee home in Dietzenbach in April last year.

The 35-year-old Iranian stabbed Mohammad K. twenty times with a knife, hitting his neck twelve times, according to the indictment from the public prosecutor's office.

Then he hid the body under the bed.

Jan Schiefenhoevel

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Physical evidence speaks for the accused as the perpetrator, such as DNA findings and other traces at the crime scene, the judge says to him.

The accused had consumed drugs with the victim.

The judge suggests that drug intoxication may be counted in the defendant's favour.

Maybe this speech wasn't even necessary.

The defense attorney then immediately made a statement on behalf of his client admitting the killing.

However, Mohammad K. can no longer remember the exact process, says lawyer Ulf Köper.

Nevertheless, Wagner keeps asking to learn more about the crime from the accused.

Accused speaks of joint drug use

He had met the subsequent victim, also Iranian, six or seven months earlier and had taken drugs with him in Frankfurt, the accused says.

He himself had consumed heroin, cocaine and crack, the acquaintance heroin.

He financed the consumption by selling drugs himself or distributing them for other dealers.

The later victim was a seller, from whom he had obtained drugs.

The acquaintance was often with him in his room in the refugee home and had dealt in drugs from there.

On the day of the crime he had money and therefore took more crack than usual, says Mohammad K. During this intoxication he heard voices in his head, just like before when he had consumed large quantities.

He went to sleep in his room, then the acquaintance suddenly walked over him with a knife in his hand and he felt threatened, says the accused.

The judge asked many questions about this description.

Finally, Wagner asks the accused to draw a sketch.

The suspect's drug use and intoxication during the crime will play an important role in the verdict.

But there is already ambiguity on the first day of the trial.

The depiction of frequent consumption is supported by the statement of a social worker in the printing room in Frankfurt's Bahnhofsviertel.

Mohammad K. took drugs there regularly, even three times in one day.

On the other hand, a psychiatrist who treated the accused for his methadone addiction reported that drug tests in the weeks before the crime had shown that no more drugs had been consumed.

The trial will continue on Thursday.