URL http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-06/09/c_137240847.htm

DATE/ AUTHOR 2018-06-09 00:00:00	AUTHORS: 

H Refugee suspected of murdering German girl arrested in Iraq - Xinhua

S1 BERLIN, June 8 (Xinhua) -- A refugee suspected of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in western Germany has been arrested in Iraq, the German Interior Ministry confirmed on Friday.

S2 According to Interior Minister and Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Horst Seehofer, Kurdish security forces seized the 20-year-old Ali B. in northern Iraq.

S3 Seehofer thanked local authorities for their swift assistance in the investigation and said that the German foreign office and police had begun filing a request for the suspect's extradition "in accordance with international regulations."

S4 The asylum seeker Ali B. stands accused of having raped and murdered the 14-year-old girl Susanna F. before successfully fleeing with his entire family from the German refugee center in Wiesbaden-Erbenheim to his native country of Iraq.

S5 In the event, airport personnel failed to notice that the names given by the group in Arabic on the boarding tickets for the flights to Iraq via Istanbul did not match the identification papers.

S6 Seehofer announced the news of the suspect's subsequent arrest during a hastily-convened press conference in the town of Quedlinburg.

S7 "It is important for me to inform the population that no one can feel safe (from prosecution) anywhere on Earth after this horrible crime thanks to international cooperation", the CSU leader said.

S8 However, a spokesperson for the Wiesbaden state prosecution office noted that Germany has not signed an extradition treaty with Iraq and that it was hence a matter for local judiciary authorities to decide whether or not to fulfil Berlin's request.

S9 An Iraqi trial as an alternative solution is not possible under the German constitution as the crime would "carry a potential death sentence" in the suspect's home country.

S10 Susanna F. was a member of Germany's Jewish community who volunteered at the refugee center in Wiesbaden-Erbenheim and reportedly knew the brother of the suspect.
S11 After disappearing two weeks ago, police revealed on Thursday that they had found the mutilated body of the 14-year-old and issued a public search warrant for Ali B. as the primary suspect in the case.

S12 German police reiterated on Friday that they were still asking people with any knowledge of the case to come forward in order to enhance their understandings of the events which led to the teenager's death.
S13 A 35-year-old refugee with Turkish nationality was temporarily taken into custody on suspicion of being involved in the murder but has since been released again.

S14 State prosecutors emphasized that no evidence had surfaced prior to Ali B.
S15 's airborne escape on May 23 to link him to the disappearance of Susanna F. Only on the following day did a 13-year-old boy living at the same refugee center report to police that the suspect had boasted about committing the crime.

S16 The case has provoked widespread outrage in Germany, not least because Ali B. was known to police as being violent and had already been accused of raping an 11-year-old girl living at the same Wiesbaden-Erbenheim refugee center.

S17 The suspect was formally denied asylum status at the end of 2016 and subsequently filed an ongoing appeal.

S18 Carsten Schneider, the German Social Democrats' (SPD) deputy parliamentary faction leader, called for a swift clarification of how the suspect managed to escape and how he could now be placed before a court in Germany "as fast as possible."

S19 Free Democratic Party (FDP) leader Christian Lindner further opined in the newspaper BILD that the incident raised the question of "why rejected asylums seekers are not deported more resolutely."

