A citizen of Turkish and Swiss nationality was sentenced this Tuesday to 20 years in prison by the Federal Criminal Court of Bellinzona, Switzerland, for the 2020 murder of a Portuguese man in Morges, Switzerland, the first attempt in this country related to Islamic fundamentalism.
Omer A., 29, who admitted his sympathy for the terrorist group Islamic State and said he had committed the attack to “avenge the international war against the terrorist organization”, was given an even higher sentence than demanded by the officer prosecutor, who had asked for 18 years in prison, the newspaper reported Tribune of Genevaquoted by EFE news agency.
The murder took place on September 12, 2020 at a restaurant in Morges, a town on the shores of Lake Geneva near Lausanne, when the attacker randomly chose a victim, a Portuguese national, and stabbed him in the back, after he had shouted “Allah is Super Good”.
The victim, a Portuguese man aged 29 at the time of the crime, João Azevedo, recently lived in the region, where he worked in the apple picking business.
The Portuguese was waiting in line at a ‘kebab’ restaurant when he was attacked by the convict for no apparent reason. At the time of the crime, the victim was accompanied by his girlfriend and friends, who witnessed the attack.
The convict, who has suffered from schizophrenia since his teenage years, has already served 15 months in prison for the 2019 attempt to set fire to a gas station, and during his detention he violently assaulted two members of the security forces (a police officer). officer and a prisoner, who stabbed him with a pen).
The trial took place last December and psychiatric experts concluded that the defendant’s schizophrenic problems could be a mitigating factor, although he refused to undergo psychiatric treatment, which will be replaced by other therapies.
The convict, who worked as an apprentice painter, admitted he began to radicalize in 2016, though he said he had never pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, claiming that after his time in prison he had lost “all interest in holy war”. ” had lost. . .
Source: DN
