A German court has sentenced an Iraqi asylum seeker to 11 years in prison for the “brutal rape” of two Chinese students who were studying at a local university.
“Eleven years is a tough sentence. However, it is the price for what the accused did to the absolutely innocent victims for no reason, ” Volker Talarowski, judge at the town court in Bochum, western Germany, said as he pronounced the sentence. The public prosecutor’s office initially requested between 12 and 14 years behind bars for the offender.
“It is the court’s understanding that the accused had absolutely no idea about what he had done, ” the judge said, as cited by the German Der Western media outlet. Nor did he understand “what unending pain he actually inflicted on the women [he raped] , ” Talarowski added, pointing out that the man “malignantly grinned” after one of the two victims provided testimony in court.
The offender, identified as Ziyad K., 32, sexually attacked his victims, aged 22 and 28, in August and November 2016, not far from the famous Ruhr-University Bochum, one of the largest universities in Germany.
In August, he choked his victim with a shoelace and hit her over the head with a stick, the court revealed. The victim “could have died at any moment” because of choking during the incident, the judge said, as reported by Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) .
