Marwa Ali El-Sherbini (Arabic: مروة على الشربيني), was an Egyptian woman and German resident who was killed in 2009 during an appeal hearing at a court of law in Dresden, Germany, when she was three months pregnant. She was stabbed by Alex Wiens, an ethnic German immigrant from Russia against whom she had testified in a criminal case for verbal abuse. El-Sherbini's husband, who was present at the hearing, tried to intervene. He too was repeatedly stabbed by Wiens and was then mistakenly shot and wounded by a police officer who was called to the court room. Wiens was arrested at the crime scene and subsequently tried for murder and attempted murder. He was found guilty of both charges; it was also found that Wiens's actions constituted a heinous crime, because they were committed in front of a child, against two people, in a court of law, and fulfilled the murder criterion of treacherousness, such as hatred against foreigners. Wiens was sentenced to life imprisonment. The death of El-Sherbini immediately resulted in international reactions, with the most vocal responses coming from predominantly Muslim nations. The Egyptian public and media focused attention on the religious and racial hatred aspect of the killing, especially as the initial confrontation between the victim and perpetrator had happened because she wore an Islamic headscarf. In response to anti-German sentiments and public protests in Egypt and other countries, the German government issued a statement of condolence nine days after the incident. Wiens's trial for murder and attempted murder occurred under strict security measures and was observed by national and international media, diplomats and legal experts.
Marwa El-Sherbini Marwa El-Sherbini was born in 1978 in Alexandria, Egypt, to the chemists Ali El-Sherbini and Laila Shams. In 1995, she graduated from El Nasr Girls' College, where she had acted as a student speaker. El-Sherbini went on to study pharmacy at Alexandria University, obtaining a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical sciences in 2000. From 1992 to 1999, she was a member of the Egypt national handball team. In 2005, El-Sherbini moved with her husband, Elwy Ali Okaz, to Bremen, Germany. In 2008, the couple and their two-year-old son moved to Dresden, where Okaz, a lecturer at Minufiya University, obtained a doctoral research position at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. El-Sherbini worked at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus in Dresden and at a local pharmacy as a part of an accreditation programme to practice pharmacy in Germany. With others, El-Sherbini set up a registered voluntary association with the aim of establishing an Islamic cultural and education centre in Dresden. At the time of her death, El-Sherbini was three months pregnant, expecting her second child.
Alex Wiens Alex Wiens (Russian: Алекс Винс, also known as Alexander Wiens) was born in 1980 in Perm, Russia under the name Alexander Igorevich Neltsin. After leaving school, he completed a vocational training programme as a warehouseman. In 1999, after a medical examination for conscription, Wiens was exempted from compulsory military service in the Russian armed forces; it was stated that Wiens probably had suffered from a severe and chronic psychosis. In 2003, he immigrated to Germany and gained German citizenship as a result of his ethnic origin. In Germany, he worked as a builder and caretaker, but had been living on welfare benefits for the long-term unemployed at the time of the murder. In November 2009, at the time of sentencing, Wiens was 28 years old, unmarried and without children.
Verbal abuse and court case for defamation On 21 August 2008, Wiens and El-Sherbini met at a public playground in Dresden's Johannstadt district, where Wiens's niece and El-Sherbini's son were playing. During a quarrel over whose child should be using the playground's swing, Wiens began shouting verbal abuse at El-Sherbini. El-Sherbini who was wearing an Islamic headscarf, was called "Islamist", "terrorist" and (according to one report) "slut". Other people present tried to intervene, but Wiens vehemently continued the verbal abuse for several minutes, directing epithets in Russian and German at the Russian-speaking bystanders who attempted to reason with him. El-Sherbini called the police on a bystander's mobile phone and within a few minutes four police officers arrived in two vehicles at the scene. El-Sherbini and Wiens were questioned; El-Sherbini was subsequently driven away in one of the police vehicles. Wiens was charged with criminal defamation and given a penalty order to pay a fine of €330. After formally objecting and refusing to pay the fine, Wiens was tried at the district court of Dresden. He was found guilty by the court and fined €780 in November 2008. However, during the trial Wiens claimed mitigating circumstances for the act of insulting El-Sherbini, suggesting that "people like her" were not really human beings and therefore incapable of being insulted. The public prosecutor appealed the verdict, aiming at a custodial sentence, due to the openly xenophobic character of the incident. Wiens also appealed the verdict and was subsequently granted a court-appointed defence counsel. His counsel intended to withdraw the appeal before the scheduled hearing at the regional court, but Wiens objected to this.
Appeal case and fatal attack in courtroom
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