Homicide Zurich High Court: According to the defense lawyer, the victim provoked the killing

In the trial for the killing of a woman in Zurich Altstetten in October 2021 before the Zurich High Court, the defense lawyer of the accused husband on Tuesday attributed complicity in his own death to the victim. He requested that the crime be classified as manslaughter.

The now 49-year-old had been under severe emotional strain for a long time, said the defense lawyer. The woman had repeatedly abused, insulted and provoked him for years. She was not innocent of her death. This circumstance had to be taken into account in the sentence.

There could be no question of the particular ruthlessness that would allow a murder qualification. The accused should only be convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a maximum of five years imprisonment.

Should the court classify the crime as intentional homicide, a maximum sentence of 10 years would be appropriate, said the defense lawyer. In the case of a murder conviction, a maximum of 15 years would be imposed. The deportation of the recognized refugee, a Turkish Kurd, should be waived; at best, it should be reduced from 15 to a maximum of 10 years.

Criticism of the district court

The defence lawyer criticized the first-instance ruling of the Zurich District Court. A year ago, the court had sentenced the man to 20 years' imprisonment for murder and ordered him to be deported for 15 years. The accused had not wanted to let the woman go. The defense lawyer contradicted this: his client had agreed to the divorce.

The district court had carried out a "result-oriented" and partly arbitrary assessment of evidence. Evidence exonerating his client had been trivialized or even ignored. The fact that the 300-page written grounds for the judgment were available after just one month shows that they had already been drawn up in advance.

Intent to kill denied

In his questioning this morning, the man denied that he had taken a knife with him on the evening of the crime and had ambushed his wife outside the entrance to the house. He had seen her by chance as he was driving past and had wanted to talk to her about the children. She had once again insulted him in the worst possible way. Then he felt a pain in his stomach. From then on, he had no memory.

According to the indictment, he killed the woman with ten massive stab wounds. He then injured himself with the knife. The public prosecutor will have her say in the afternoon. The verdict is expected to be opened on Wednesday.