Dresden, Germany - A German admitted Wednesday that he killed an Egyptian woman and wounded her husband with a knife in a courtroom, claiming he did so because he was under "stress" and not because of his racist views. Alex W, aged 28, offered no apology in the six-page statement which he had apparently intended to read aloud at his murder trial in Dresden. It was read for him by his lawyer Veikko Bartel instead.
"I can't even understand any more why I committed this crime," W said, denying that the attack had been pre-meditated. "It is true that I have anti-foreigner attitudes, but that was not my motivation, the statement said. "I was in a state of fear and panic."
He said the court case, in which he faced harsh punishment for criminally insulting Marwa al-Shirbini, 31, had put him under stress and made him fearful of going to jail. He had felt "powerless" and "unfairly treated by the state, especially the bureaucracy."
After the attack, "I was sorry it had happened and that my life was ruined and that I had not been shot dead myself," he said.
He faces lifelong prison if convicted of murder and attempted murder.
The July 1 attack outraged people in Egypt. Al-Shirbini's 3-year-old son saw his pregnant mother die in a pool of blood from multiple stab wounds.
W has refused for weeks to answer questions by the police. Apart from one violent outburst, he has been silent since his trial began last week, staring at the ground and keeping his head covered by a hood attached to his sweater.
When his lawyer asked him to make the statement, he told Bartel, "I can't do it." Bartel coaxed him, "You have to," but he refused.
Presiding judge Birgit Wiegand asked him if the lawyer had drafted the statement in W's own words, and he said, "Yes," his first word addressed to the court. The judge later asked him if he would answer some questions about it, but he told her, "No."
Heiko Lesch, a lawyer representing al-Shirbini's widower, responded that W was just trying to play down the crime.
Lesch said the attempt to portray the attack as spur of the moment was contradicted by the evidence that W took a knife to court, and the denial of a racist motive meant nothing, since W had said before the crime that he believed Muslims had "no right to life."
"I regard that as the true motive," said Lesch.
W, who was born and raised in Russia, claimed the murder weapon was a knife that he had kept in his backpack for many weeks.
"I did not intend to use it to attack her and her husband," he claimed. He said his memories of July 1 were incomplete, but he recalled "ordering myself to stand up and attack her." He said at that moment, everyone in court seemed like shadows and mere shapes.
Witnessed told the court that W had repeatedly spoken hatefully about foreigners and declared his pride in the German citizenship he obtained under a government programme to repatriate descendants of long-ago German emigrants.
One recalled him saying he would kill Muslims if he ever got an automatic weapon in his hands. No more witnesses are to appear.
The court in Dresden was to hear a court psychologist explain Thursday why W is sane. The prosecution and defence are to make their speeches Monday and Tuesday and a verdict is expected on November 11.
The trial is being closely followed in the Islamic world.
The attack on al-Shirbini happened during an appeal hearing after W had already been ordered to pay a fine for insulting the headscarf- wearing mother at a children's playground in 2008.
He had called al-Shirbini a "terrorist" and a "slut" during that encounter in August 2008, after she asked him to get up from a child's swing which her young son wanted to use.
W said in his statement that the initial fine had been a "terrible shock" to him. He had felt "personally threatened" and had fallen into a depression. He had to ease this by drinking copious alcohol and had to himself into "a funny state."
