A trial has begun in the regional court of Mannheim for a German couple accused of murdering a Ukrainian woman and her mother to claim the younger woman’s baby as their own, Spiegel reports.
In 2024, the body of the 27-year-old Ukrainian woman was found on the banks of the Rhine after her family disappeared from a refugee shelter. Her 51-year-old mother’s body was later discovered, while the newborn girl was found unharmed.
At the start of the trial, the 45-year-old woman and her 43-year-old husband admitted to the crimes through statements read by their lawyers.
According to prosecutors, the couple killed the women in March last year to pass off the five-week-old baby as their own. The suspects, reportedly a Russian woman and a German man from Sandhausen near Heidelberg, had long wanted a child.
The woman had sought out Ukrainian refugees through a Telegram group to offer support. There, she connected with the younger victim, who was seeking translation help during her pregnancy. At the time of the murders, the victims and the infant were living in a refugee shelter in the Rhein-Neckar district.
The baby, now about 11 months old, currently lives with her aunt in Ukraine, who is participating in the trial as a co-plaintiff. It is scheduled to last nine days, with a verdict expected on 21 February.
Earlier, the leader of Edinburgh City Council, Labour’s Cammy Day, was suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations of his inappropriate behavior toward Ukrainian refugee women.
According to journalists from The Sunday Mail, Day allegedly “bombarded Ukrainian refugees” with messages and added them on a dating site. The women claimed he asked sexually explicit questions and suggested meeting “over a glass of wine.”
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