Bogus child migrant gets life for rape and murder
AN asylum seeker who pretended to be a child migrant has been jailed for life for raping and murdering an EU official’s daughter.
Hussein Khavari, who claimed to be from Afghanistan, admitted attacking student Maria Ladenburger, 19, in Freiburg, Germany, in October 2016.
He raped and strangled her, then placed her in the river where she drowned, the judge said.
Khavari was arrested weeks later and DNA tests linked him to her death. He was convicted as an adult, despite claiming to be a minor, and was yesterday told he will serve an indeterminate sentence because of the brutality of the crime.
Life in German prison usually means no more than 15 years but the court said he must be confined for longer than this if necessary.
At the start of his trial in September, Khavari recalled smoking cannabis on the night he ambushed his victim before raping and placing her in the knee- deep water of a nearby river.
His victim, whose father is a senior legal adviser to the European Commission in Brussels, spent her spare time helping out migrants at homes and shelters in Freiburg.
After his arrest, it emerged he had already been sentenced to ten years in jail in Greece in 2014 for attempted murder after pushing a woman off a cliff. By October 2015, however, he had been freed.
He fled to Germany, where he claimed to be 17 – although evidence presented during the trial suggested he could be as old as 32 and may in fact come from Iran. Khavari told Freiburg District Court that he had smoked cannabis on the night and that he was so drunk he had been ejected from a bar.
He claimed he came across Miss Ladenburger by chance and that she shouted towards him after falling from her bicycle. He said he pressed her mouth shut, choked her with a scarf, then put her unconscious body in the water.
‘When I saw how pretty she was, I wanted to have sex with her,’ he said, claiming they did not because he was too drunk.
He broke down in court and said in his statement: ‘I want to apologise to the family of Maria.
‘I beg your pardon. I wish I could undo it. What I have done, I am sad for from the bottom of my heart.’
Prosecutors disputed his account of the murder and said it was most likely premeditated.
A psychiatric expert said his remorse was fake and warned that there was a ‘high risk’ he would reoffend. He added that Khavari showed a ‘great and persistent readiness for violence, an interest in aggressive sexual practices and a hostile attitude towards women’.
Miss Ladenburger’s murder crystallised anger against the opendoor asylum-seeker policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel during last year’s general election.
Hard- Right anti- immigration party Alternative for Germany used Khavari’s arrest to highlight what it says are the dangers of unregulated immigration – boosting its vote to 12.6 per cent.
The leader of the country’s police union said Miss Ladenburger’s death could have been prevented had Chancellor Merkel’s refugee policy been stricter.
‘Strangled and drowned her’