Date: Friday, 01 March 2019
In the trial for the cruel death of an infant, the district court in Lüneburg sentenced the mother to nine years in prison for manslaughter. The court did not rule on Friday from a less serious case. The 25-year-old had stifled her then four-month-old daughter Maya in December 2016 in Soltau and then cut off her head.
The court faced a particularly difficult decision. "The events that have been clarified here, is really very unusual," said the Chairman Judge Axel Knaack. The severed head makes the case even more enigmatic. "We do not know what's behind it, we can not explain it."
The court followed his decision by one of the two psychiatric reviewers. Unlike his colleague, he had seen no signs of serious personality disorder in the Eritrea-born woman.
For the deed, a bunch of motives may have come together, decided the Chamber. These included general overwork, relationship stress and the sense of perspective hopelessness. Also, the child born out of wedlock could have been perceived as a sin in view of the cultural background. Until the act, the woman had shown no signs of disturbance, emphasized Knaack.
The court followed his decision by one of the two psychiatric reviewers. Unlike his colleague, he had seen no signs of serious personality disorder in the Eritrea-born woman.
"That was not a mother of a raven, she loved her child," said judge Knaack on Friday. The woman regretted in her closing remarks the death of her daughter in tears on Monday. "I'll have to endure until the end of my life," she said.
The court sentenced the woman to a life sentence of a year ago for murder on low grounds. She had wanted an independent life without a child, the district court said. In addition, she had wanted to take revenge on the father of the girl, because he left her alone.
