A German couple received lengthy jail sentences Friday for brutally raping and killing a Chinese student in eastern Germany, in a shocking crime that caused outrage in both countries.
The court in the city of Dessau found that the 21-year- old defendants, named only as Sebastian F. and Xenia I., lured the 25-year-old architecture student to an empty apartment in May last year, DPA news agency reported. They submitted their victim to a horrific ordeal that led to her death.
Presiding judge Uda Schmidt called the case an "incomprehensible crime", handing down a life sentence to Sebastian F., meaning at least 15 years in prison, and a juvenile sentence of five years and six months to his partner at the time, who is the mother of three children.
The two defendants, who sat impassively as the verdict was read out, were also ordered to pay a total of 60,000 euros ( 71,300) for the pain and suffering of the victim's parents, who were co-plaintiffs in the case.
Schmidt said the pair's sole motive had been to fulfil a sadistic sexual fantasy.
After trapping her in the flat, the pair repeatedly sexually assaulted the woman, leaving her with such severe injuries that they assumed she would die, the court found.
When the couple returned hours later and found the victim, identified in media reports as Li Yangjie, still alive, they carried the severely injured woman away and abandoned her in underbrush.
After friends in Germany and China alerted the authorities that she was missing, police organised a search for the woman, who was from the eastern province of Henan. Her corpse was found two days later.