Metal barriers, body scanners, bullet-proof glass, 200 police officers and rooftop marksmen have transformed Dresden’s district courthouse into a high security bubble this week.
The setup is in stark contrast to a day in July when Alexander Wiens allegedly smuggled a kitchen knife into the same courthouse and stabbed a pregnant Egyptian pharmacist to death.
The extraordinary security measures are now there to protect the life of Wiens, who has had a fatwa issued against him by an Egyptian sheikh. The case began in summer last year when Wiens, an unemployed man of Russian origin, met Marwa el-Sherbini, 31, in a playground where he refused to give up a swing to her toddler son, Mustafa, hurling anti-Islamic abuse at her.
The police were called and pressed charges against Wiens. He was found guilty of racial abuse and fined. The court heard this week how, during his appeal against the verdict on July 1, Wiens plunged his knife 16 times into the heart and then the back and arms of Sherbini. He then stabbed her husband, scientist Elvi Ali Okaz, who was trying to help his wife.
“He was like a man possessed,” said Tom Maciejewski, the judge who presided over the civil case in July and who was called back this week as a witness in the murder trial.
He compared the “thud” of the knife as it penetrated the woman with a volley of machine-gun fire. Maciejewski scurried under his bench and repeatedly pressed the emergency button until armed guards arrived.
Rather than Wiens, however, the guards shot Ali Okaz, apparently mistaking him for the aggressor.
Accompanied by members of his family, Ali Okaz arrived in court this week on crutches, having spent three months in hospital being treated for ripped tendons in his leg. He also wore a badge bearing a picture of his late wife.
Now it is the German judicial system that is being made to feel it is in the dock as much as Wiens, as Arab observers look to see that he is given the highest sentence.
“The Arab world is expecting nothing less than the severest possible punishment,” said Aktham Suliman, bureau chief of the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera in Germany. “We’ve been at pains to explain to viewers that there is no death penalty in Germany.”
Maria Bohme, a top aide to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said the government was well aware that the trial was being closely followed.
“This makes it all the more important to trust and respect the independence of German justice,” she said.
The case has caused fury in the Arab world, with protests in Cairo, Alexandria and later in Iran and Karachi, where Sherbini was dubbed the “Hijab martyr” and Germans were labeled murderers. It has heightened the international tension surrounding the trial, which is due to end on Nov. 11.
There have been fears of reactions as explosive as those to the 2005 Danish cartoons row. An Egyptian sheikh issued a fatwa calling on Muslims in Germany to take revenge, and a Dresden orchestra has been forced to cancel concerts in Egypt. The German foreign ministry, aware of the highly sensitive nature of the case, has worked closely with the Egyptian embassy, helping about 20 Egyptian journalists to cover the trial.
As if to emphasize the importance the case is being given in Egypt, in courtroom 84 this week was the Egyptian ambassador, the consul, the president of the Egyptian chamber of lawyers, a team of Egyptian lawyers and the chairman of the Central Council of Muslims, which represents 4.8 million people in Germany. Even Iran has sent observers.
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