Sophia delete

Sophia Lösche (born February 17, 1990 in Amberg in the Upper Palatinate ; † after June 14, 2018 ) was a German political activist. Her murder by the Moroccan truck driver Boujemaa Lamrabat while she was driving with him as a hitchhiker gained international attention.

Life

Sophia Lösche was born in Amberg as the daughter of the Protestant pastor Johannes Lösche and Maria-Elisabeth Lösche and grew up in Pommelsbrunn . She is the sister of the museum educator Katharina Lösche and the culture manager and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen politician Andreas Lösche . She and her parents moved back to Amberg in 2004. In 2010 she passed the Abitur at the Max-Reger-Gymnasium there and moved to Bamberg to study German. After completing her bachelor's degree in 2015, she started her master's degree in German studies in Leipzig and lived there until the end.

Since her early youth she has been active against right-wing extremism . As the student representative of the Max-Reger-Gymnasium, she campaigned for participation in the “ School without Racism - School with Courage ” program. At the University of Bamberg , she was involved in student representatives , where she was, among other things, the social affairs and university policy officer of the university-wide student council and student representative in the university's senate from 2011 to 2015 . Sophia Lösche campaigned for emancipatory educational policy and against social barriers such as B. Tuition fees or admission restrictions .

In February 2014 she ran for the SPD for the Bamberg city council on list position 8. In addition to stronger promotion of non-commercial culture through active cultural promotion and the abolition of curfew, among other things, the creation of cheaper social housing. From 2013 to 2015 she was on the board of the sponsoring association of the student union AstA Bamberg eV, responsible for finances.

Between 2016 and 2018 she traveled to Lesbos several times to support refugees in the No Border Kitchen group .

Homicide

On June 14, 2018, Sophia Lösche was hitchhiked by the truck driver Boujemaa Lamrabat and did not arrive at the destination. Her body was found in northern Spain on June 21. Lamrabat was arrested on June 19, 2018 in southern Spain and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Bayreuth Regional Court on September 18, 2019 for unrelated murder with dangerous bodily harm.

The culprit

At the time of the crime, Boujemaa Lamrabat (* 1977) was a married family man with three daughters and one son. His childhood and youth were characterized by family neglect and low education, but with his work as a truck driver he managed to get a job that was very good by Moroccan standards, which enabled him to rise to the middle class. Nonetheless, he described his marriage as shattered and blamed it on his wife. As Lamrabat himself later stated, he was a character who got angry easily, having stabbed his wife in the chest with a knife in an argument. The incident was never reported and was filed under “Household Accident”. In the early summer of 2018 he received the order for the Benntrans forwarding company to load machine accessories at various stations in Southern and Central Europe and to transfer them back to Morocco.

Course of action

On June 14th, Sophia Lösche, who was living in Leipzig at the time, wanted to hitchhike to her home town of Amberg for her father's birthday . She took the S-Bahn to Schkeuditz to address travelers at the Schkeuditz motorway service station who could take her with them. Lamrabat spoke to her at around 5:55 p.m. after watching her from his truck. After going to the gas station at the rest area, he came back to Sophia Lösche a few minutes later. After a short conversation, she finally got into his truck, which left at 6:16 p.m.

The day before, Lamrabat had taken several photos of two women sitting in his truck who were using a public toilet. Less than two hours before he spoke to Sophia Lösche on June 14th, he had taken photos of his erect member with his cell phone in the truck. During the trip he secretly took pictures of Lösche.

At 7:44 pm, Sophia Lösche wrote a message from her cell phone to a friend via a messenger service stating that she was “hitchhiking with Bob, a Moroccan trucker from Leipzig to Nuremberg”, followed by four shocked Smileys. At 19:47, the truck stopped at the Berg / Bad Steben rest area , where the two of them had a coffee at the gas station there and Boujemaa Lamrabat went to the toilet.

At 9:03 p.m. the truck stopped for over two hours at the Sperbes rest area in Upper Franconia , just a few kilometers from the destination of Lamrabat, a logistics company in Lauf an der Pegnitz .

Reconstruction of the regional court

In the opinion of the Bayreuth Regional Court, the stop at the Sperbes rest area was "certainly" not at the instigation of Sophia Lösches. The court was convinced that this was the last chance for Lamrabat to attempt sexual advances. Sophia Lösche had "clearly and unequivocally" rejected this attack. Lamrabat, who was “massively” offended, then grabbed a 40 cm long iron wheel nut wrench and hit Lösche several times on the head. Lösche would have survived this attack. According to himself, Lamrabat then left the truck and considered what to do. According to the court, he decided at this time to kill Lösche “so that she could no longer cause problems”. According to the judgment of the regional court, he returned to the truck after 10 to 20 minutes and opened the driver's door. After he wanted to have seen that Sophia Lösche was still moving, he reached for the wheel nut wrench again and, while standing on the stairs, hit the head of the person lying on the ground again. He then cleaned the floor of the blood with the victim's clothes and fixed the victim's feet and arms with cable ties so that the corpse could be stowed inside the truck more easily. At around 12:30 a.m., Lamrabat reached its destination, a logistics company in Lauf, and loaded the truck there as agreed.

Lamrabat then drove over 72 hours to just before Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Basque Country . There he deposited the body at around 5 a.m. on June 18, near a petrol station near Avarrena . He drove on at first, but returned a few minutes later to the dump, doused the body with gasoline and set it on fire to cover up traces. Then he continued the journey.

At noon on June 18, the private search party, which had been made up of friends and relatives since Sophia Lösche's disappearance on Thursday, reached the truck driver's shipping company in Tangier by phone. This established the contact to Lamrabat. He then informed the friends by phone that he had let the missing person get off at a motorway exit just before Lauf as agreed.

On June 19, Lamrabat was arrested near Carboneros . His truck had previously gone up in flames just a few kilometers before he was supposed to meet a colleague to swap tractors. Even if the court considers it probable, it could not ultimately be proven whether the truck fire was started intentionally.

On June 21, Sophia Lösche's body was finally found by employees of the nearby gas station.

Reconstruction of the accessory complaint

The accessory prosecution also regards the defense against sexual assault as the trigger for the first attack in Sperbes as proven. As he explained in detail in his closing statement as a joint plaintiff, Sophia Lösche's brother, Andreas Lösche, considers it likely that Boujemaa Lamrabat initially tied the victim after the first attack and only in the period between June 16 and 17 France killed. There he stood at the “Aire Claude-Bonnier” rest area for almost 24 hours because of the Sunday driving ban for trucks.

On the one hand, the opinion of the Spanish forensic medicine speaks for a later time of death in France. The Spanish autopsy report placed the time of death on June 16 or 17. In contrast to the Spanish report, the German forensic doctor Seidl located the time of death on June 14 in his report, which was prepared just under two months after the Spanish autopsy report. Furthermore, in contrast to his Spanish colleagues, he assumed that the handcuff was only carried out after the occurrence of death. The Spanish experts testified in court that theoretically a time of death on June 14th would also be possible, but only if the body was well isolated and transported with constant refrigeration. However, there is evidence that Lamrabat only bought the foils in which the body was found in France.

On the other hand, the fact that Lamrabat wore white trousers when Sophia Lösche got on would continue to speak against a crime scene in Sperbes. On the surveillance cameras of the company in Lauf it can be seen that he also arrived in white trousers, although, according to Lamrabat's own statements, a lot of blood flowed during the killing, which was also confirmed by the forensic reports in the process.

In addition, on the morning of June 15, Lamrabat took a photo of himself in front of his truck on the company's premises in Lauf. The curtain is not drawn so that the driver's cab can be seen from the outside. In order to prevent the bloodbath supposedly taking place a few hours earlier from being discovered, one might expect him to draw the curtain.

In addition, Lamrabat only got rid of a blood-smeared overalls in northern Spain. When he was arrested, Lamrabat also wore an undershirt with blood stains that could clearly be attributed to Sophia Lösche - "He would have had that for six days."

A beer can seized on the company's premises in Lauf, on which DNA traces of Sophia Lösche and Boujemaa Lamrabat could be found in the drinking area, arose during the process. It can be proven that Lamrabat only bought this beer can in Lauf, which speaks against a killing in Sperbes. The author of the German autopsy report Seidl explained this through a possible transmission by Lamrabat, which is also possible after death.

Despite these discrepancies, the presiding judge, Bernhard Heim, stated in the verdict that a time of death according to Sperbes "was not compatible with the result of the evidence".

Main hearing

On July 23, 2019, the Bayreuth Regional Court opened the main hearing in the criminal proceedings against Lamrabat for murder . The public prosecutor's office had initially located the murder feature in the concealment of a sexual offense. In the course of the process, however, no sexual offense could be proven. Ultimately, it emerged from the accused's descriptions, which the court brought into line with the reports of the experts during the taking of evidence, that the crime must have taken place in two sequences. Even if the first sequence could possibly have happened in a highly affect-oriented state, what was involved here was murder and not manslaughter . This judgment was justified by the intention to cover up the previously committed serious bodily harm. The court sentenced Lamrabat on September 18, 2019 to life imprisonment for murder in the majority of cases involving dangerous bodily harm .

The fact that the police initially did not search for Sophia Lösche or a possible perpetrator despite a missing person report and that Lamrabat's truck almost completely burned out immediately before his arrest had a negative effect on the trail situation. The exact course of events can therefore no longer be reconstructed. This is reflected in the contradictions between the first autopsy report, which was prepared by Spanish forensic experts in June, and the second, almost two months later, the German forensic doctor Prof. Stephan Seidl's report. The public prosecutor's office and ultimately also the court largely followed Lamrabat's descriptions and the German autopsy report in their reconstruction of the course of events. Sophia's brother, who appeared as a joint plaintiff in the trial, followed the autopsy report of the Spanish forensic scientists in his closing argument.

Criticism of the police

Relatives of Sophia Lösches criticized the investigative work of the police several times in public . The focus here is specifically on an alleged misjudgment of the urgency of the case in the first few days after the missing person was reported and the cross-state cooperation between the police authorities of Bavaria and Saxony.

The relatives are convinced that in this case the suspicion of a violent crime should have been investigated from the start . Although Lösche was considered very reliable, had a specific goal and reported to relatives during the journey, the Bavarian and Saxon police initially only treated the case as a missing person. The relatives accuse the competent authorities of not having taken search measures quickly enough to find the missing person and the possible perpetrator. Relatives had already asked the responsible police station on June 15 - one day after Sophia Lösche's disappearance - to check video recordings of Sophia's supposed starting point in Schkeuditz. It was not until the afternoon of the following day, on June 16, that a police patrol was persuaded to inspect the material. Although the license plate number and the name of the carrier could be determined, an arrest warrant was issued against the driver on Tuesday, June 19.

The relatives also received support in evaluating the investigation from the criminologist Thomas Feltes : "In the present case, the officers who received the first missing person report fundamentally misjudged the situation." As a consequence, relatives of Sophia Lösche are calling for the police regulations to be changed that references to a particular hazard situation must be followed up consistently.

In addition to the misjudgment of the danger situation, the relatives also criticized the coordination of the investigation process between the Bavarian police, where the missing person was reported by the father, and the Saxony police, which would have been responsible due to the primary residence in Leipzig. It took the authorities four full days to clarify who was actually responsible in this case. A few days before the start of the process, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said that "organizational measures would be taken to accelerate the determination of responsibility in such cases in the future."

Political dimensions of the criminal case

Consider the case as a femicide

From the start, Sophia Lösche's relatives resisted racist appropriation of the case and victim blaming . They made it clear again and again that the murder of Sophia Lösche was a femicide , i.e. a murder of a woman because of her gender. At the start and end of the trial, relatives and relatives held memorial events in front of the Bayreuth Regional Court, in which they pointed out that the murder was part of a system of structural violence against women.

Instrumentalization by right-wing extremists

Since the perpetrator's origin became known, the case has repeatedly been instrumentalized by right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis. So were members shortly after the first newspaper reports hatred news to death threats in which they were accused by their commitment against xenophobia and xenophobia to be responsible for the death of Sophia Lösches with. Relatives and family then published a statement while they were still looking for Lösche, in which they rejected a racist appropriation of the act and rejected the blaming of the guilt for the murder of Sophia herself as victim blaming.

During a so-called “funeral march” as part of the racist riots in Chemnitz in August and September 2018, right-wing extremists carried larger-than-life pictures of supposed “victims” of German immigration policy, including those of Sophia Lösche. Relatives then initially made a statement to the public to make it clear that Sophia stood for “love, compassion and humanity completely regardless of the culture, country or social class from which someone comes” and “against exclusion, racism and misanthropy ”. They also made it clear that, in their view, patriarchal structures were responsible for death. “Sophia is not a victim of any immigration policy - not only because the suspect was not an immigrant living in Germany. Sophia is a victim of violence against women. "

In order to take action against the use of Sophia's picture by right-wing extremists and fascists, the family also filed a complaint with the Chemnitz public prosecutor against Björn Höcke and Lutz Bachmann . In the course of the investigation into copyright infringement by the Chemnitz public prosecutor, the Thuringian state parliament lifted Höcke's immunity , which ran in the front row of the funeral march and published a picture on his Facebook page , on which the photo of Sophia Lösche could also be recognized. In the further course, however, the Chemnitz public prosecutor closed the investigation because he was neither the person registering nor the meeting leader of the demo. There is no evidence of his involvement in the organization of the elevator, the production and use of the pictures and the use of the picture carriers.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heinrich Bedford-Strohm: Mourning Address for Sophia L. , published by Alexander Unger on Onetz on August 1, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019
2. ↑ Andrea Mußemann: Funeral for Sophia: "We miss you so much" on Onetz on August 1, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019
3. ↑ University of Bamberg: Obituary for Sophia Lösche from June 29, 2018 on Facebook , accessed on September 30, 2019
4. ^ Election test stones of the student convention of the University of Bamberg for the 2014 municipal elections , accessed on September 30, 2019
5. ↑ Annual report of the AstA Bamberg eV 2015
6. ↑ Dagmar Willamson: Ambergerin tells about experiences on Lesbos Secret Kitchen in the strip club on Onetz on March 29, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Hans Holzhaider: Who knows, in Süddeutsche Zeitung from 19.09.2019, p. 3
8. ↑ Manfred Scherer: Sophia case: A GPS track through half of Europe. In: Frankenpost. July 24, 2019, accessed October 10, 2019 . 
9. ↑ ^{a b c d} Karin Truscheit: Sophia L. was omnipresent in FAZ on September 18, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
10. ↑ ^{a b} Christine Ascherl: Sophia Lösche murder trial: Technology exposes truck drivers on Onetz on August 14, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
11. ↑ Fabian Huber: Death of a hitchhiker, in Augsburger Allgemeine August 16, 2019, p. 3
12. ↑ Christine Ascherl: Sophia Lösche: first unconscious, then dead on Onetz on July 31, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
13. ↑ ^{a b} Christine Ascherl: Judgment in the Sophia Lösche murder trial: Lifelong for Boujemaa L. , on Onetz on September 18, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
14. ↑ Isolde Stöcker-Gietl: Murder of a hitchhiker: Sophias Lachen stays in Mittelbayerische Zeitung from September 18, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
15. ↑ ^{a b c} Kristina Sandig: Sophia Lösche murder trial: time of death remains unclear on Onetz on August 16, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
16. ^ Fritz Winter: 1700 kilometers with the corpse in the truck? in Mittelbayerische Zeitung on June 23, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019
17. ↑ Christine Ascherl: Sophia Lösche: The desperate search of friends and family on Onetz on July 30, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
18. ↑ Ulrich Wolf, Sven Heitkamp and Martin Dahms: Sophia's last trip in Sächsische Zeitung of June 22, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019
19. ↑ ^{a b} Sophia process: cause of the truck fire cannot be clearly clarified on BR.de from August 14, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
20. ↑ Per Hinrichs: "God protect my wife," wrote the alleged murderer on Welt.de on July 24, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
21. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Christina Ascherl: Sophia case: Public prosecutor and family call for life on Onetz on September 10, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
22. ↑ Bayreuth / Amberg: Continuation in the Sophia Lösche trial on Oberpfalz TV from August 16, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
23. ↑ ^{a b} Marianne Sperb: case Sophia: A death in many details in Mittelbayerische newspaper of 16 August 2019 accessed on September 30, 2019
24. ↑ Fabian Huber: Sophias Reise in den Tod in Südkurier from August 16, 2019, accessed on October 1, 2019
25. ↑ Christine Ascherl: Across Europe: Was Sophia still alive? on Onetz on July 24, 2019, accessed September 30, 2019
26. ^ Matthiasuppe: Sophia murder case: chief investigator reconstructs crime - several attacks in Leipziger Volkszeitung on July 25, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
27. ↑ Marianne Sperb and Isolde Stöcker-Gietl: Sophia case: perpetrators asked for forgiveness in Mittelbayerische Zeitung on September 10, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
28. ↑ Matthiasuppe: Sophia murder trial: Judge gives information on possible verdict in Leipziger Volkszeitung from August 20, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
29. ↑ ^{a b} Marianne Sperb: case Sophia: When did the student? in Mittelbayerische Zeitung on September 10, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
30. ↑ Matthias Doll: Sophia murder case: Expert questions Spanish autopsy results in Leipziger Volkszeitung on August 16, 2019, accessed on October 1, 2019
31. ↑ Hilke Lorenz: Trial of the murder of a young hitchhiker: Could Sophia Lösche still be alive? in Stuttgarter Zeitung on July 21, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
32. ↑ ^{a b} Andreas Glas: "Everything that was determined, the police did not determine" in Süddeutsche Zeitung of August 29, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019
33. ^ ^{A b c} Tobi Lang: Sophia case: "Police misjudged the situation" in Nürnberger Nachrichten of July 10, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019
34. ↑ ^{a b c} Matthiasuppe: Sophia murder case: Cousin of the victim criticizes inaction of the police in Leipziger Volkszeitung on August 3, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
35. ↑ Sabine Kreuz: Leipzig Public Prosecutor's Office: Crime knows no borders - more and more legal assistance is needed in Leipziger Volkszeitung on August 16, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
36. ↑ Sophia case: Bavarian Ministry of the Interior draws consequences on BR.de from July 23, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019
37. ↑ ^{a b} Missing student: Relatives of Sophia L. defend themselves against racist agitation on Spiegel Online from June 21, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019.
38. ↑ Ulrike Gastmann: Violence against women: "Your own fault" in DIE ZEIT on November 7, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019.
39. ↑ Sophia case: Minute's silence and demo before the start of the process on BR.de on December 17, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019.
40. ↑ ^{a b} Sophia's friends and family: Love couldn't be turned into hate more plausibly on Facebook from September 4, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019.
41. ↑ ^{a b} Till Eckert: These people want to prevent the death of their friend from being instrumentalized by rights on ze.tt from September 5, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019.
42. ↑ complaint against Höcke and Co. on Onetz on 30 September 2018 called on September 30 of 2019.
43. ↑ Because of the Sophia case: Investigations against Höcke initiated on BR.de on December 17, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019.
44. ↑ Investigations against Höcke posted in Sächsische Zeitung on June 22, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019.