After a rampage on the A100 motorway with several serious injuries, the Berlin district court ordered the accused to be kept in a psychiatric hospital.
The presiding judge explained the decision on Monday because of a pathological delusion. The man, who acted in the state of incapacity, continues to pose a high risk to the general public due to a serious illness.
In August 2020, the Iraqi is said to have hit several vehicles with his car on the Berlin city highway and then hit three motorcyclists. “He was concerned with the killing of random victims,” said the chief prosecutor’s plea. The 31-year-old drove at breakneck speed and “deliberately hunted motorcyclists” with his car. Legally, these three cases should be classified as attempted murder. The victims were injured, some of them life-threatening, and are still suffering physically and mentally from the consequences.
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“People were supposed to die,” the verdict went on to say. An Islamist motivation was not determined. However, the man’s delusion “contains religious and Islamist elements”. Because the 31-year-old is not willing to take medication, “it can be expected at any time that he will become acutely psychotic again”. The court also imposed a five-year driver’s license ban.
With the verdict, the judges essentially followed the requests of the representative of the Attorney General’s Office. The defense attorneys had spoken out against further placement in the so-called forensic prison. The decision is not yet final.