Trial of man who killed Muslim woman begins

Egyptian journalist Nashwa El-Hofy speaks with the police in front of the district court in Dresden yesterday.
Photograph: Reuters

A GERMAN-RUSSIAN man accused of stabbing to death a pregnant woman in a Dresden courtroom last July went on trial amid tight security yesterday, a few doors from the scene of the attack.

Alexander Wiens’s attack on Egyptian-born Marwa al-Sherbini in July – and a slow reaction from the German media – sparked a fierce reaction in the Muslim world.

A fatwa was issued on the assailant’s life, while al-Sherbini was dubbed a “martyr”.

Wiens crossed al-Sherbini’s path in a Dresden playground in August 2008 when she asked him to allow her son use a swing he was occupying.

Wiens began calling the woman in a headscarf an “Islamist”, “terrorist” and “whore”. She later pressed charges for defamation, successfully, and the two met in July for a final time during an appeal.

Yesterday her widower, Elwy Okaz, described how Wiens lunged at his wife with an 18cm kitchen knife as she went to leave the court.

“He hit her several times and when I tried to help he hit me too,” said the 32 year-old man, speaking in Arabic.

“It was only then that I noticed he had a knife and that he had stabbed her and began stabbing me too. He kept stabbing her even when she lay on the ground.” She bled to death in front of her three- year-old son, Mustafa.

When police stormed into the courtroom, they shot Mr Okaz, presuming him to be the assailant.

The state prosecutor said yesterday that Wiens “intended to kill” in an attack “motivated by pure hatred of Muslims”.

Wiens (28) was brought to court in an armoured vehicle, wearing a hooded top, with a black scarf and sunglasses obscuring his face.

He was fined €50 for failing to remove the glasses and sat motionless behind reinforced glass.