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The Stuttgart Regional Court has ordered lifelong psychiatric confinement for an Afghan refugee who fatally stabbed a jogger in Hochdorf last year, ruling him mentally ill and highly dangerous.
The Court delivered its verdict on Tuesday, finding that while there was no doubt the 25-year-old defendant committed the crime, he should be acquitted due to his mental illness. Judges ruled that his ability to control his actions could not be conclusively proven to have been intact at the time of the attack.
He will, therefore, not be sent to prison for murder. Instead, the Court ordered his indefinite placement in a psychiatric hospital. “He will remain where he is: in a psychiatric hospital,” the presiding judge stated. According to the Court, the man from Kabul has displayed clear signs of psychosis since early 2024.
As reported by SWR, the killing occurred on Nov. 15, 2024, when the defendant randomly encountered a 56-year-old jogger during his lunch break in the Esslingen district of Hochdorf. He stabbed him four times in the chest with a knife-like object, puncturing his heart and causing him to bleed to death at the scene. Prosecutors described the attack as an act of insidious murder, fueled by the defendant’s general frustration. There appeared to be no specific motive why the victim was targeted, with prosecutors deeming the jogger to have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
During the trial, the prosecution, supported by the attorney for the victim’s widow, argued that the defendant’s psychiatric state made him a continued threat to the public and called for his detention in a psychiatric facility. However, the victim’s lawyer questioned whether the defendant was truly psychotic at the time of the killing.
The defense did not request a specific sentence, claiming there was no clear motive for the crime and insisting that the defendant was not mentally ill. The defendant himself denied guilt, stating in court that his clothes were not bloodstained and alleging that the evidence against him was fabricated and had been tampered with.
Court records revealed that the man arrived in Germany from Afghanistan in 2022 and had been transferred shortly before the killing from an asylum shelter in Hochdorf to an accommodation in Wernau, which he reportedly disliked. On the day of the crime, he returned to Hochdorf, clashed with the caretaker, and was thrown out. He then allegedly threatened to kill others before encountering the jogger.
Witnesses described a heated argument between the two men and alerted police. By the time officers arrived, the attacker had fled.
He was found about an hour later at his Wernau accommodation, where he was arrested.
