Dresden (dpa / sn) - A 39-year-old has been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Dresden Regional Court for the murder of his sister. According to the conviction of the jury, the man from Iraq, together with his brother, smothered their sister five years ago. She was 22 years old. On Monday, the court cited base motives as a characteristic of murder.

With the separation from her husband, the young woman violated the so-called family honor, explained Herbert Pröls, presiding judge of the jury, in the verdict. "The defendant has denied her the right to live according to her own ideas." Accordingly, the 22-year-old is said to have been suffocated with a blanket in her apartment in Dresden on the morning of October 14, 2017.

The process began at the end of April this year and ended after 20 days of negotiations. According to the indictment, the brothers acted "out of anger and anger at the refusal of the victims to submit to the ideas of their families". The court heard a large number of witnesses. Other clues included DNA traces of the brothers, cell phone evaluations and driving profiles. The accused had not commented on the allegations.

The 30-year-old brother who was initially accused will later have to answer before the Dresden Regional Court. He is currently serving a multi-year prison sentence for drug trafficking in Italy and was not extradited for the trial.

The 22-year-old fled to Germany with her first husband in 2016 – the couple later separated. On October 11, 2017, the woman married her new boyfriend in Hamburg under Islamic law. The two brothers were also present at the wedding. The three siblings drove back to Dresden on the same day. The young woman was killed in the early morning of October 14.

The new husband had turned himself in to the police after losing personal contact with his wife and being stalled by the brothers. Officials eventually opened the apartment and found the 22-year-old's body.