BERLIN: German prosecutors said on Friday that a man held over the suspected Islamaphobic murder of an Egyptian woman in a courtroom on July 1 had also been charged with the attempted murder of her husband.
The Russian-born German identified only as Alex W. had been under arrest for stabbing Marwa Al-Sherbini at least 18 times in front of her three-year-old son and her husband in a courtroom in Dresden.
The death of the 31-year-old, dubbed the veil martyr and who was expecting the couple s second child, fuelled anti-German sentiment in Muslim countries including in her home country and Iran.
The killer, who previously called Al-Sherbini an Islamist and a terrorist , also stabbed her geneticist husband Elwi Ali Okaz, who was shot in the leg by confused police who took him for the attacker.
Alex W. is a Spaetaussiedler (late emigrant), the name given to Eastern Europeans of German descent entitled to German citizenship who have settled in Dresden in large numbers and who are a fertile breeding ground for neo-Nazis. -AFP
