Published: Just now
Three young men are sentenced for murdering and raping a 13-year-old girl in Vienna. The girl was found dead by a tree in a residential area and the murder aroused strong emotions and political reactions.
The 13-year-old had ingested far too large amounts of ecstasy, according to the coroners. The court determined that the three young men had given her the drug with the aim of sexually exploiting her.
They were in an apartment on the eastern outskirts of Vienna when the girl stopped breathing. The men say they panicked, but they carried the girl outside and placed her lifeless body against a tree before calling an ambulance. By then she was already dead.
No one has admitted that they gave the girl drugs, but the court sees collective responsibility. A 24-year-old man is sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. The other two, 19 and 20 years old respectively, are also sentenced to prison for 19 and 20 years respectively as they did not help the girl. All three are convicted of sexual crimes.
The murder became the subject of loud debate in Austria, where the country’s major media had extensive reporting and several political parties chose to highlight that the three men were asylum-seeking Afghans.
Austria’s chancellor at the time, conservative Sebastian Kurz, promised that the killers would be “punished with the full force of the law” and declared that it was unacceptable that “people come to us, say they are seeking protection, and then commit cruel and barbaric crimes in Austria.”