The presiding judge of the second criminal chamber announced the guilty verdict on Thursday in Bern. The man’s attack took place in May 2019 in the Emmental. The victim is a 19-year-old young woman who was born male.
At the age of nine she realized that she was “not living in the right body”, as she said in an interview with the newspaper “20 Minuten” a year ago. Little by little she began to dress and make-up feminine and rebelled more and more against her father.
Only barely survived the attack
After coming home late one evening, she lay asleep in the family room’s living room. Suddenly the Iraqi kneeled over her and shouted at her: “Are you gay?”, “You are gay”. Then he stabbed several times with a kitchen knife.
The young woman was able to push her father away with her legs and ran to neighbors covered in blood. The thyroid gland was severed, the windpipe had a hole and it had lost one to one and a half liters of blood. According to the indictment, she survived with good luck. Scars on her neck still bear witness to the attack today.
Father denies the attack
The higher court process came because the Iraqi had appealed against the first instance judgment of the regional court of Emmental-Oberaargau. On Tuesday, the defense attorney pleaded before the high court, as he did before the regional court, for acquittal in case of doubt for the defendant.
The representative of the Bern Public Prosecutor’s Office asked for confirmation of the first-instance judgment.
Because the Iraqi denies the attack, the first instance ruled in December 2020 after a circumstantial trial. The regional court came to the conclusion that there were several indications in favor of the trans woman’s version of the crime.