A German court on Thursday sentenced a married mother of two to nine years in jail for killing five of her babies whose births she had concealed.
The 29-year-old woman had admitted during the trial in the northern town of Flensburg to secretly giving birth and immediately killing the five newborns between 2006 and last year.
Three of the infants were suffocated and two stabbed with scissors, the court concluded, finding the woman, who is from the town of Husum and was not named, guilty of five counts of manslaughter.
Although the trial was unable to clarify exactly why the woman killed the infants, she had said in questioning by the police that her husband did not want any more children.
Presiding judge Michael Lembke said that when it came to pregnancy and birth, the defendant had virtually “suppressed, ignored, completely blanked [it] out” and that the labor pains had taken her by surprise.
However, her actions were always unplanned, he said.
Although an offender, she was “no monster,” he added.
A psychiatric assessor ordered by the court said her motive remained unclear.
The woman, who has two children of school age, gave birth at home or in the woods.
Two bodies were found in a paper recycling plant and a car park in 2006 and 2007.
Last year when the woman was asked to provide a routine DNA sample as part of investigations, she turned herself in and took police to the bodies of three further babies hidden in her cellar.
Her husband was described at the time the woman was charged as “completely devastated.”
He told police he knew nothing about the pregnancies.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of