Two Afghan brothers have been jailed for life for the murder of their sister for abandoning Islam for a Western lifestyle.
Yousuf Sayed H., 28, and Mahdi Seyed H., 24, were convicted of killing victim Maryam H., 34, by the Berlin District Court in Germany, on Thursday, 16th February 2023.
Prosecutors said they killed her because Maryam had given up her Islamic practices and refused to wear hijab after separating from her husband.
Her body was found sealed in a suitcase in a hole near Yousuf Sayed H.’s house in the town of Holzkirchen, in Bavaria, Germany, on Thursday, 5th August 2021.
Presiding judge Thomas Gross said at the trial: “They denied her this right, this right to life.”
Maryam fled to Germany with her husband and their 11-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son and applied for asylum in 2013.
After years of domestic violence, in 2017, she used German law to divorce her husband Saeed Habib H., 48.
But news of the divorce enraged her brothers, who flew to Germany to force her to stay with her husband.
Her two brothers told her that her actions “dishonoured their family.”
A friend of Maryam reported that the two men became violent towards their sister and added: “She was always very scared since her divorce.”
Unable to force her to go back to her husband, the brothers killed Maryam and stuffed her body in a suitcase, the court heard.
CCTV images from Suedkreuz station in Berlin show them dragging the case onto a train heading for Neuburg an der Donau, in Bavaria.
Shortly after, Maryam was reported missing from her Berlin home by her boyfriend, who told the police about her fear of her brothers.
After being quizzed, Yousuf Sayed H.’s girlfriend took police to the place where Maryam’s remains had been buried.
The brothers were arrested after an autopsy identified the remains at Maryam.
Defence lawyers had argued that the killing was an accident during a heated family row.
But during the trial, it was revealed that Yousuf Sayed H. had searched for a 70-kilo (154 lbs) suitcase online a few days before the killing.
Several days later, Mahdi Seyed H. choked his sister to death before slitting her throat to make her body fit the suitcase.
Judge Gross said: “Maryam was lured to Reuterstrasse 15, where the younger brother lived.
“That was the scene of the crime, everything prepared. One of them held Maryam, preventing her from screaming.
“The other one tied her hands with duct tape. She was choked with a cloth that cut deeply into her throat. One of the brothers slit her throat.”
. Meanwhile, Islamic scholar Christine Schirrmacher, 60, from the University of Bonn testified as a witness and said: “Crimes like this don’t happen out of passion, planning takes time to prepare.
“Knives, strangling, throat slitting, religious ideas play a role here – you sacrifice someone who may already be dead, that makes the sacrifice pleasing to God.”
The verdict can be appealed.
