Frauenfeld District Court rules on 16-year-old homicide
Published: Monday, Mar 4th 2024, 05:40
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More than 16 years after a homicide, the district court of Frauenfeld TG is opening its verdict on two suspects today, Monday. The prosecutor is demanding life imprisonment for murder, while the defense lawyers are pleading for acquittal.
The court can only rely on circumstantial evidence. However, it has files that go far beyond what was discussed in court on Monday and Tuesday last week. According to the law, a conviction may only be handed down if the court has no reasonable doubt as to the culpability of the accused.
On December 13, 2007, the body of a 27-year-old Egyptian man was found in Lake Barchet in Thurgau. It was weighed down with a concrete element and had four gunshot wounds. The investigation did not make much progress for a long time and the crime became a so-called "cold case". The case was reopened much later.
Undercover investigators were assigned to one of the suspects. A 63-year-old Swiss landlord described the crime to them in detail. A 59-year-old Italian crane operator helped him.
The two are standing trial as defendants. They are alleged to have carried out the crime on behalf of the Egyptian's Swiss wife. The woman has since died.
Exact time of the crime unclear
It is still unclear when exactly the killing took place. The forensic experts were unable to determine the exact time of death. According to the indictment, the Egyptian was last seen on the evening of December 10, 2007 and his body was found on the afternoon of December 13.
According to the public prosecutor, the later victim was lured into an ambush and shot. The accused are said to have transported the body to the hidden Barchetsee lake and dumped it there after tying a concrete element to it with ropes.
Applications diverge as much as possible
The public prosecutor accuses the two men, who have not confessed, of murder and demands a life sentence for both. He is relying heavily on the accounts of the Swiss man. These would have contained details that only the perpetrator could have known.
The defense lawyers pleaded for full acquittals. They dismissed the Swiss man's accounts as grandiloquent gossip, saying that the details came from the media. And the Italian could not have been involved at all. At the time of the crime, he had a medical certificate for severe back pain.
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