Bonn court ruling Syrian man sentenced to 15 years in prison
Lohmar/Bonn · A sentence was handed down on Thursday in the trial of a Syrian refugee who threw his three children out of a first-floor window. The 35-year-old was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The 35-year-old father remained quiet as the sentencing was handed down. He was convicted on three counts of attempted murder and for assaulting his wife in a separate incident. On February 1 of 2016, he threw his three children out of a first-floor window of a refugee home in Lohmar. The seven-year-old daughter received life threatening injuries, and his five-year-old son also suffered critical injuries. Because the one-year-old daughter landed on top of her brother, she was spared from serious injury.
Prosecutors had called for a life sentence but a Bonn court sentenced the defendant to 15 years. The court acknowledged the man’s background, growing up poor and illiterate, and affected by the violence around him in his homeland. His first wife and son died in a car accident. After his newly arranged marriage did not go as he thought it should, with his wife not as obedient as he expected, he took the family to Germany. He expected things to get better in Germany because his new wife said she would accept his authority when they lived there. Instead, he became angry and violent when she expressed her will to become more independent like German women. She can read and write and was attending a German language course.
On January 4, he assaulted his wife, hitting her with a pan in the face, and he received a 10-day restraining order. She later allowed him back home. When he returned, he had threatened that he would throw the children out of the window if she would ever humiliate him like that again, but she couldn’t imagine he would commit such an act.
The children have since physically healed and the mother has filed for divorce. In prison, the 35-year-old Syrian is under watch because he attempted to take his life. (Orig. text: Rita Klein)
