Hanau (dpa/lhe) - In the trial against the mother of a four-year-old boy who suffocated in a sack, the pleadings are expected this Thursday (10 a.m.). The public prosecutor had accused the Germans of putting the boy in the sack in August 1988, tying it up and placing it in the care of a suspected sect leader. The child reportedly passed out and choked on his vomit.
The 61-year-old is charged with murder. An arrest warrant against her was suspended a few months ago, however, because according to the current status of the process, which has been going on for about a year, there is "no longer any urgent suspicion" for a joint murder. There is also "no weighty evidence" for aiding and abetting the murder.
The alleged cult leader had already been convicted of murder around two years ago, but the Federal Court of Justice overturned this decision in May of this year and referred the case to a jury chamber of the Frankfurt Regional Court for a new hearing and decision.
From the point of view of the federal judges, the Hanau Regional Court should have dealt more closely with the question of whether it was "an act of killing by active action or by omission," it said at the time, among other reasons, as a reason. In addition, the federal judges had demanded that the criminal responsibility of the accused must be re-examined.
Investigators had long believed the boy's death to be an accident, and it was only in 2015 that the case was reopened after tips from sect dropouts.
