sam, Déc 16th 2023
On Friday, the Zurich District Court found a 39-year-old man guilty of intentional homicide and a number of secondary offences’s.
After serving his sentence 10 year sentence, the Iranian must leave Switzerland for 12 years the Zurich District Court ruled area. While serving his sentence, the man has to undergo outpatient therapy. According to a psychiatric report, he suffers from a personality disorder with schizoid, unsocial and paranoid elements.
The court therefore took slightly reduced culpability into account when sentencing. However, it also took various previous convictions into account. The verdict is not yet legally valid. It can be appealed to the High Court of the Canton of Zurich.
The public prosecutor had demanded a prison sentence of 15 years and an equally long expulsion from the country. The defence lawyer pleaded the Zurich district court for leniency.
This clearly constituted contingent intent. The accused had not acted with direct intent to kill, but he had accepted the fatal consequences of his blows. The man had acted with a “considerable degree of violence” and a high level of criminal energy, said the presiding judge in the oral reasons for the verdict.
On the afternoon of March 3, 2022, the accused had visited his acquaintance, a 58-year-old Swiss man, at his home. An argument ensued. The accused used a wooden club and his fists to beat his friend’s head and upper body. He suffered broken bones and serious head and brain injuries, which led to his death in hospital six days after the attack.
As the judge explained, neighbors had heard noise and cries for help, called the police and rang the doorbell. The 58-year-old man had opened the door, badly injured and covered in blood, and the accused had only come to the door afterwards – unharmed. The victim described what had happened to the neighbors and the police officers.
The court had no doubt that the accused had committed the crime and had used the wooden club, which he denied. The kicks mentioned by the prosecution, on the other hand, could not be established. And the exact sequence of events remained “somewhat unclear”.
The 39-year-old’s description of the course of events is contradictory and unbelievable, at times unrealistic. They were defensive allegations. The man had claimed that the older man had attacked him and that he had acted in self-defence. However, he admitted that he had overreacted.
The defendant asked that he not be expelled from the country. His defence lawyer explained that this would be “an absolute trauma” for his client. The man had come to Switzerland as a small child, completed his schooling and apprenticeship here and worked. After the death of his father, he crashed, consumed alcohol and drugs and had been drawing an IV pension since 2016.
The accused was “certainly a case of hardship”, said the judge in the Zurich district court. However, the public interest in him leaving Switzerland outweighed this. According to the expert opinion, there was a high risk of recidivism. The man speaks Persian and the situation in Iran does not speak against his entry.
©Keystone/SDA
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