"Honor killing" trial

Shazia K. broke out into tears when she saw her youngest child, sobbing and extending both arms to the child. The 14-year-old, however, moved directly to the witness stand at the Darmstadt court where her parents faced charges of malicious murder with an abject motive on Friday in the death of her 19-year-old sister.

Shazia K., her husband, Asadullah, and the 19-year-old daughter had been quarrelling for months, the younger daughter said, adding that her older sister had met a student with a "good family background," also of Pakistani descent.

The young woman met secretly and exchanged text messages with her boyfriend, which upset her religious parents. Shazia and Asadullah, who were married in an arranged marriage in Pakistan, did not approve of their daughter's relationship. But their daughter, who had grown up in Darmstadt, did not adhere to her parents' rules, which led to the crime allegedly committed on January 28, 2015, according to the prosecutors.

Prosecutors argued that Shazia had made sure that her younger child spent the night at her aunt's, the father is believed to have entered his daughter's room at 2 a.m., to have assumed a sitting position astride the sleeping young woman and strangled her with his bare hands. Afterwards, the prosecution contended, the parents put clothes on their daughter's dead body, moved her out of the high-rise apartment building in a wheelchair and dropped her down an embankment in the vicinity of a nearby park.

"Dishonorable behavior"

In Shazia K.'s statement, read out by her lawyer, she called herself an oppressed woman who had to obey her husband's orders and was not allowed to have opinions of her own. Her husband had even prohibited her participation in a German language course, she said in the statement. The lawyer then mentioned her altercations with her daughter, whose behavior was called "dishonorable."It detailed how the young woman would stay away for home "for several nights" and had shown no respect for her parents and had stopped wearing a head scarf. When Shazia K. described her feelings, she used the word "shocked" time and again.

One day, her lawyer continued, Shazia K. had received a letter from the police: Her 19-year-old daughter had been caught trying to steal condoms.

"At this point it became clear that there was sexual contact," he read, and when Shazia K. showed the letter to her husband "he snapped." This had been followed by continuous squabbles.

The 19-year-old punched her father on the night of her death, according to Shazia K.'s statement. She had tried to mediate, the defendant continued, but her husband refused to let her get involved in the disagreement. Shortly afterwards she saw him sitting astride their sleeping daughter, strangling her: "I wanted to scream, but I couldn't." Suffering from rheumatism, she said she did not have the strength to interfere.

She said her husband then forced her to put clothes on their dead daughter and help him move the body out of the house. She was not involved in the crime itself, she claimed.

Mother called the shots

The mother had "called the shots" at home, the 14-year-old girl said on the witness stand. She had been very strict, often beating the children. "There were slaps in the face, and we were also hit on the head," said the girl, who has severed all ties to her family in the meantime.

Drowned in tears, the other accused, the father, listened to his daughter's statement. From his seat, he kept looking at her, but she did not return the glance. He was sorry, wishing he could undo the crime. The 51-year-old German of Pakistani decent confessed months ago to police that he had strangled the 19-year-old, but before the trial said he loved his children - including the now deceased daughter.

"Mum sent us away"

Attended by her lawyer, the 14-year-old continued her testimony: Originally, her cousin had planned to spend the night at the family's home on the evening her sister died. But the mother had sent the two girls away: "She suggested we spend the night at my aunt's," the girl said. Despite her pleas, her mother could not be persuaded: "She said my sister needed peace and quiet."

When she heard the news about the 19-year-old's death, she "thought at first that she had committed suicide," the witness stated, "because of the trouble at home." Then her aunt had told her that her sister had died of an appendix-related illness. The girl, who continues to receive therapeutic treatment, learned later about the circumstances of her sister's death.

The trial is scheduled to continue on October 2.