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German court jails two men for holding sex slaves

A German court on Wednesday handed heavy jail sentences to two men for abducting, raping and keeping three women as sex slaves in a house in Garlstedt near Bremen in 2006.

Published: 2 July 2008 17:03 CEST

German court jails two men for holding sex slaves

The dog cage where the women were held. Photo: DPA

The young women, who contacted the men thinking they were offering jobs or a room for rent, were tortured and humiliated for several months. The court convicted the men of kidnapping, human trafficking, rape and sexual harassment.

The 42-year-old Stefan K. will spend the next 14 years behind bars and his accomplice, 55-year-old Bernd K., was sentenced to 12.5 years in jail. They also were both ordered to pay €150,000 in compensation to each victim.

Presiding Judge Volker Stronczyk said the defendants had serious personality disorders that would allow them to subject the women to such “intense psychological duress.” He based his ruling on the assumption that Stefan K. was likely to remain “dangerous up to an advanced age” and that an expert had determined he was a perverse sexual sadist.

The 14-month trial was closed to the public, but harrowing details of the women’s ordeal have now been made known. The two men originally planned to open a brothel in early 2006. But after no one answered an advertisement, they decided to abduct women and force them into prostitution.

The first woman, a 23-year-old psychology student, was imprisoned on August 14, 2006 after she came in response to an ad for a promotion job. The men threatened to kill her if she didn’t do their bidding, but for reasons the court did not explain they did not prostitute her during her three months in captivity.

The second victim fell into their clutches in September 2006. Like the first woman, she was occasionally forced to stay in a dog cage. However, the men also raped her and offered her to other paying customers.

The third woman was imprisoned in October 2006 after she came looking for a room to rent. Fortunately she was able to flee – naked and handcuffed – the same day through a window in the house’s attic, bringing the horrible ordeal of the other women to end after police were alerted.

“One can only ask with fright how it might have continued otherwise,” the judge said.

dpa/ddp

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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