A German man accused of sexually abusing and killing a four-year-old Bosnian refugee has admitted murdering another child, police said on Friday, as investigators probed possible links to other missing children.
“The man confessed overnight that he had also killed Elias,” said Berlin police spokesman Stefan Redlich, referring to a six-year-old German boy who had been missing since July.
Investigators found human remains in a garden allotment in Luckenwalde, about 50km south of Berlin, after the man identified as Silvio S told police Elias’s corpse was buried there, although tests are needed to confirm the identity.
Photo: AFP
The suspect was arrested on Thursday after his mother told police he may have been involved in the kidnapping of the Bosnian boy, named Mohammed.
Police later found the body of a child packed in cat litter inside the suspect’s car, which appeared to have been dead for some time.
An eight-hour autopsy confirmed the body was that of Mohammed, prosecutors said on Friday.
The boy had been missing since Oct. 1, when his mother took him and his sisters to Berlin’s main refugee registration centre, Lageso, which receives hundreds of asylum seekers daily.
His disappearance triggered a massive police operation, with the missing child’s photograph appearing regularly on television screens in Berlin’s subway trains.
Police also released CCTV footage of a bearded man leading a child who was holding a stuffed toy.
But the search turned out to be futile as the boy “was already dead on Oct. 2, the day after his kidnapping,” the police spokesman said.
Forensic investigators found signs of strangulation on Mohammed’s neck, prosecutor Michael von Hagen said on Thursday, adding that the accused had admitted using a belt to choke the child to death.
The man, who worked as a security guard in Berlin, admitted taking Mohammed from the refugee centre to his flat where he sexually abused him, von Hagen said.
However, when the child began screaming, the suspect killed him to prevent anyone from hearing, before covering the body in cat litter to hide any odor, the prosecutor said.
Mohammed’s family has been living in Germany for more than a year and on the day of his kidnapping, the mother had gone to the registration center to obtain her social allowances, according to local media.
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