Hatun "Aynur" Sürücü was a Kurdish-Turkish woman living in Germany whose family was originally from Erzurum, Turkey. She was murdered at the age of 23 in Berlin, by her youngest brother, in an honor killing and sororicide. Sürücü had divorced the cousin she was forced to marry at the age of 16, and was reportedly dating a German man. Her murder inflamed a public debate over forced marriage in Muslim families.
Wolfgang Kaleck is a German civil rights attorney. He is the founder as well as the general secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. He resides in Berlin, Germany.
Marwa Ali El-Sherbini, was an Egyptian woman and German resident who was killed in 2009 during an appeal hearing at a court of law in Dresden, Germany, when she was three months pregnant. She was stabbed by Alex Wiens, an ethnic German immigrant from Russia against whom she had testified in a criminal case for verbal abuse. El-Sherbini's husband, who was present at the hearing, tried to intervene. He too was repeatedly stabbed by Wiens and was then mistakenly shot and wounded by a police officer who was called to the court room. Wiens was arrested at the crime scene and subsequently tried for murder and attempted murder. He was found guilty of both charges; it was also found that Wiens's actions constituted a heinous crime, because they were committed in front of a child, against two people, in a court of law, and fulfilled the murder criterion of treacherousness, such as hatred against foreigners. Wiens was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The National Socialist Underground, or NSU, was a far-right German neo-Nazi terrorist group which was uncovered in November 2011. The NSU is mostly associated with Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe, who lived together under false identities. Between 100 and 150 further associates were identified who supported the core trio in their decade-long underground life and provided them with money, false identities and weapons. Unlike other terror groups, the NSU had not claimed responsibility for their actions. The group's existence was discovered only after the deaths of Böhnhardt and Mundlos, and the subsequent arrest of Zschäpe.
The Lesja Murder Case refers to the disappearance, rape and murder of 13-year-old Ingrid Marie Skotte from Lesja, Norway in February 1987. The disappearance became one of the most publicized criminal cases in post-war Norway.
Marianne Bachmeier was a West German woman who shot and killed Klaus Grabowski, a man being tried for the rape and murder of her daughter Anna, in an act of vigilantism in the District Court of Lübeck in 1981. The case sparked extensive media coverage and public debate. As a result, Bachmeier was convicted of manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm. She was sentenced to six years but released on bail after serving three. Bachmeier moved abroad before returning to Germany after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died aged 46 and was buried next to her daughter, Anna, in Burgtor Cemetery, Lübeck.
Martin Ney is a German serial killer. He wore a mask while killing three and sexually assaulting at least 40 children in school camps. He also did some of his activities in camps, private homes and other places. Ney, who committed his first act in 1992, was also known as the "Masked Man" and the "Black Man". After his arrest on 15 April 2011, the 40-year-old educator confessed to three murders, but is suspected of two others. Ney was sentenced on 27 February 2012 by the Stade district court, among other things, for three murders to life imprisonment. The court also noted the particular severity of the guilt.
Rudolf Pleil was a German serial killer known as Der Totmacher. He was convicted of killing a salesman and nine women, but claimed to have killed 25 people. Many of his crimes took place mainly in the Harz mountain range.
Rape in Germany is defined by Section 177 of the Criminal Code of Germany. The definition of rape has changed over time from its original formulation in the penal code established in 1871, as extramarital intercourse with a woman by force or the threat. In 1997 laws were amended to criminalize marital rape, incorporate gender-neutral language, and recognize the effect of psychological coercion. In 2016 German laws were rewritten to remove a previous requirement that a victim physically resist their assailants and be overcome by force. The new law recognized any physical or verbal cue that one party does not consent to sexual contact. It also mandated deportation for migrants convicted of sexual assault, made it easier to prosecute rapes committed by groups, and criminalized other types of unwanted sexual contact, such as groping or fondling. The changes followed a series of high-profile cases that sparked public outrage at the inadequacy of the law.
Heinrich Max Pommerenke was a German serial killer. Detained since 1959, he was the longest-serving prisoner in Germany at the time of his death.
In the alleged criminal case of Lisa F., a 13 year old Russian-German girl was reported missing for over a day in Berlin in January 2016 and, after returning, she first claimed that she had been kidnapped and raped by three strangers. The case was promptly used by Russian officials and media to accuse Germany of tolerating and covering up child abuse. These accusations provoked demonstrations of Russian Germans in several cities in Germany. The kidnapping story has been shortly after proven to be false by police after analysis of mobile phone logs and Lisa admitted she went into hiding voluntarily and wasn't raped.
Maria Ladenburger was a 19-year-old medical student from Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, who was found raped and drowned on 16 October 2016 in the river Dreisam. On 3 December 2016, Freiburg police arrested Hussein Khavari, who had been identified by a hair found at the crime scene, and a CCTV recording from inside a tram. DNA evidence linked him to the crime scene and he was ultimately convicted.
Roses for the Prosecutor is a 1959 West German comedy film with tragical and critical elements, directed by Wolfgang Staudte and starring Martin Held, Walter Giller and Ingrid van Bergen. It was one of the few German movies of the 1950s which openly addressed the German Nazi era.
Dieter Zurwehme is a German criminal and spree killer. He is responsible for the murder of five people and numerous other serious crimes and gained nationwide attention in the first half of 1999 following a several-month escape from custody. The escapes were followed closely by the media and announced an arrest reward of 10,000 Deutsche Mark.
Thomas Lemke is a German far-right serial killer, who was convicted of three murders.
Leo Egidius Schiffer was a German serial killer, who was known as The Strangler of Aachen. Between 1983 and 1990, he murdered five girls and women between the ages of 15 and 31, abusing three of them sexually. His crimes were known as "hitchhiker killings" or "Disco-murders". In 1985, the program Aktenzeichen XY… ungelöst covered his case.
Silvia Breher is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been serving as a Member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Cloppenburg – Vechta since the 2017 federal election. At the CDU conference in November 2019 she was elected as one of the deputy leaders of her party; she succeeded Ursula von der Leyen who had been elected to the Presidency of the European Commission.
Morsal Obeidi was a German-Afghan girl who was murdered in an honour killing in Hamburg. Her brother Ahmad Sobair Obeidi killed her, making it an act of sororicide, and he was jailed for life for the act.
The Favoriten Girl Murders were a series of sexually-motivated crimes committed against a young woman and two young girls: Alexandra Schriefl, Christina Beranek and Nicole Strau in the Viennese district of Favoriten. This case was among the most extensive and costliest investigations in Austrian history.
