The trial of the brutal torture murder of a 20-year-old inmate of the Siegburg correctional facility ended on Thursday with the pronouncement of long-term prison sentences against the trio of perpetrators. The Bonn Regional Court imposed prison sentences of between ten and 15 years.
With the prison sentences imposed, the juvenile division of the Bonn Regional Court kept the sentences of the two older defendants below those demanded by the public prosecutor's office. The youngest defendant received the maximum juvenile sentence of ten years. The primary motive for the crime was murderousness, the judges explained in the packed courtroom.Because of the brutality of the perpetrators, the crime had triggered nationwide horror and a discussion about the conditions in juvenile prisons. The court did not utter a single syllable about this during the pronouncement of the verdict. In the meantime, the preliminary proceedings against the then head of the detention center and four correctional officers have been dropped. In the Dusseldorf state parliament, a parliamentary investigative committee is trying to clarify the political responsibility for the crime. Since the torture murder, cell occupancy with three or four inmates is no longer permitted in the North Rhine-Westphalia juvenile penal system.
Guilt unambiguously proved The now 20-year-old alleged instigator of the murder must serve 15 years in prison. Prosecutor Robin Fabbender had demanded life imprisonment with the determination of the special gravity of the guilt. A now 21-year-old defendant, for whom the prosecution had demanded 15 years' imprisonment, has to spend 14 years behind bars. After eleven days of proceedings and the hearing of around 40 witnesses, presiding judge Volker Kunkel considered it proven that the trio had committed the crime on 11. November 2006 in a community cell of the JVA the fellow inmate Hermann H. abused for almost twelve hours. He was tortured, raped and finally forced to hang himself at the toilet door of the cell. The three young men in the dock accepted the judge's verdict outwardly unmoved. The defense lawyers had demanded throughout smaller prison sentences for their mandators. An expert, on the other hand, concluded that the two older defendants should be treated as adults. The trio had confessed to the crime in full detail at the start of the spectacular trial.
Calls for help in vain An argument over a card game in the 20-square-meter prison cell with the number 104 escalated, the judge described the course of events. The frustration and boredom of the perpetrators would then have been unleashed in a mutually agreed upon brutal martyrdom for their victim that ended in death for the young man. The injured man had tried in vain to draw attention to himself by shouting and pressing the alarm button to get help. Prison staff claim not to have noticed what was going on in the cell, although judicial staff checked the cell several times on the day of the crime. The young man's body was found the next morning. According to their own statements, the perpetrators had planned to present the death as a suicide in order to obtain prison relief or an earlier discharge due to alleged psychological stress.