Reported that a 32-year-old woman was killed in a Dresden court on Wednesday after being stabbed by the defendant. Woman’s name is Marwa al-Sherbini, she was the wife of Egyptian academic Elwi Ali Okaz who was also hurt in the incident by police and now is in critical condition in hospital, the state-owned Al-Akhbar reported.
The attacker stabbed Sherbini “shortly before she was to give evidence in an appeal lodged by the man against a conviction for insulting her over wearing the hijab,” Marwa Al-Sherbini died in the courtroom after 18 stabs yes 18 stabs inside the court. Murder (or police?) also stabbed Sherbini’s husband, Elwi Ali Okaz while he was trying to save his wife. And adding further insult to injury, a security guard shot Okaz in the leg because he mistook the husband for the attacker because of his ethnic looks according to German prosecutors.
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Police spokesman Thomas Geithner confirmed that the woman was still in the building when she died of her injuries. “The man attacked the woman with a knife in the courtroom,” Geithner said, adding that a policeman had fired a shot in the ensuing struggle.
All the background details are not known yet, but a spokesman for the state prosecutor said that the incident, which occurred shortly before 10:30 am, happened during an appeal hearing in a libel case. The defendant had been convicted and fined for libel last year.
Bettina Garmann, a spokesman for the court, said that there had been no reason to believe that special safety procedures would be necessary for the case.
The incident recalled a similar scene of courtroom violence in the Bavarian town of Landshut in April, when a 60-year-old man shot his sister-in-law before turning the gun on himself, following an inheritance ruling.
Christian Avenarius, the prosecutor in Dresden where the incident took place, said the killer was driven by a deep hatred of Muslims. “It was very clearly a xenophobic attack of a fanatical lone wolf.”
A German government spokesperson condemned the attack and said Berlin “naturally condemns this in the strongest terms.”