“My father asked me to come in the bathroom,” recalled the son, who is now six-years-old. His younger sister was playing with the water in the bathtub. Suddenly, his father grabbed him and put him on the windowsill before throwing him over. Shortly afterwards, he threw the one-year-old sister out the window as well, and she landed on top of her brother. Before the incident occurred, the young boy had heard his parents fighting.

His father planned to sell him and his siblings and go back to Syria. “So he could find a new wife there,” said the young boy without reservation. In contrast, his eight-year-old sister sat sunken and timid in her chair. She looked now and again at the colorful tablecloth. The female police officer asked her several times what had happened but the girl answered, “I don’t know.” She did recall very well, however the day when the father hit the mother with a pan in her face and he was ordered to leave the apartment for ten days. When he returned, she asked him angrily, “Why do you come back again?” She didn’t want him to come back, she only wanted her mother.

Both children painted the same picture the wife had described for the court. Long before their mother had charged him with hitting her, he had beat her and the oldest daughter repeatedly. “Always without reason - with the hand, with sticks or slippers, once with a Cola bottle,” recalled the son. When asked if they like their father, both kids answered directly, “No.” The six-year-old boy said, “If he comes home again, he will slaughter us.” His father should go to jail, there he would for sure behave.

The sister also said that no-one liked the father any more: “He should live alone and hopefully die.” Abbas P. showed no emotion even during these words. During the last meeting in the courtroom, he cried and complained. Only at the end, he chimed in with conviction, “The kids are still young, they don’t know what they’re saying.” The trial will continue next week.

(Orig. text: ga)