Mortal victims

CHRISTIAN KILLED IN A REFUGEE CAMP (FRA-981)*. In a full-blown refugee crisis, the camps set up in France were the scene of attacks against Christian migrants, harassed and blackmailed by Kurdish mafias, who threatened to report their faith to the Moroccans and Algerians. The 2016 OSCE report mentions, without giving names, the case of a Christian who was killed in a refugee camp, following several incidents of physical attacks on Christian refugees.
Source: OSCE

CRIME AGAINST A BELIEVER (ALE-391).. A 31-year-old Christian woman was killed by her flatmate in Freiburg (Germany) in 2016. The victim, from Paderborn, met her killer ten days before moving into a students’ flat. She volunteered at her local parish. Days before the crime, the attacker asked the victim for her opinion on same-sex marriage. When she said she was against it, he stabbed her to death. In the trial, the 25-year-old killer said that he hated all religions. The judge concluded that he had killed his flatmate “as a representative of her religion because he could not kill all believers”. He received a life sentence, with the possibility of parole after fifteen years.

Sources: Holy See, OSCE, The Local.

(ALE-410). De acuerdo con los registros de OSCE, y citando a la OIDAC, una mujer es asesinada en Alemania a causa de su fe.
Fuente: OIDAC, OSCE

CRIME OF BEING AN “INFIDEL” (ALE-419). . MMaría M., a 70-year-old woman, was killed by an asylum-seeker who lived in her house inn Bad Friedrichshall because she was an “infidel”. German law maintained the anonymity of the victim and the aggressor.

Sources: OIDAC, OSCE, Express.

KILLING OF A MAN IN A SUPERMARKET IN HAMBURG (ALE-669). Ahmad A., a 26-year-old man of Palestinian origin, punched a 50-year-old man to death in July 2017 in a supermarket in Hamburg and injured seven other people. The attacker, whose request for asylum had been rejected, carried out the attack with a kitchen knife he had picked from a shelf in the supermarket with the intention of killing “as many Germans of Christian faith” as possible. The authorities ruled out any connections with terrorist organisations.

Sources: OSCE, OIDAC, ABC.

AN AFGHAN WOMAN KILLED IN THE PRESENCE OF HER CHILDREN (ALE-676). On 29 April 2017 a 29-year-old woman of Afghan origin was killed in the presence of two of her children (aged 5 and 11) at the entrance to a supermarket in Prien, in southern Germany. The victim had converted to Christianity, belonged to a Protestant Evangelical church and was active in the life of the parish. During the trial the attacker, whose request for asylum had been rejected, said that he had killed the women after she had asked him if he wanted to convert to Christianity, and that he felt frustrated by his imminent deportation. The victim was the mother of two other children and was an “example of integration”, according to the local authorities. Around 200 people attended her funeral.

Sources: OIDAC, OSCE, Evangelical Focus, The Local.

A CATHOLIC PRIEST KILLED (ALE-957).. The Catholic priest Alain-Florent Gandoulou, a 54-year-old Congolese national, was found dead with signs of violence on church premises on 22 February 2018. People living nearby said that the priest had just had a loud argument with someone in French.
Gandoulou was ordained as a priest in 1991 and received a doctorate from Bonn University Faculty of Theology in 2008. In 2009, he was appointed to head the pastoral mission of the French-speaking Catholic Parish of Berlin, set up in 1945. The alleged attacker was a 29-year-old man from Cameroon. In 2019 the German courts determined that the accused was not completely responsible for the crime, as he suffered from mental illness. Given the high risk of him committing another crime, he was sent to a psychiatric institution.

Sources: Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, OSCE, DW, Agence D’Information D’Afrique Central.

STABBING IN A CHURCH IN WARSAW (POL-455). . In April 2019, a man of about 60 years of age, the father of the parish priest of Saint Augustine in Warsaw, was stabbed in the church as he went for confession. His son was also attacked and injured.

Source: Ordo Iuris Institute.

MAN OF ROMANY ETHNICITY BRUTALLY BEATEN TO DEATH (POL-707). A 26-year-old Romany man was found at night, injured, in his home in Breslavia. The victim had a broken pelvis and legs; he later died in hospital. He was the father of two children, with a pregnant wife.

Sources: Open Dialogue, Wroclaw.wp.

MUSLIM GUNNED DOWN (FRA-1317). A Muslim man was gunned down in his car. The perpetrator admitted killing the victim while shouting anti-Muslim and racist language.

Source: CCIF.

JEWISH DOCTOR KILLED (FRA-1092). Sarah Halimi, a 60-year-old Jewish woman and a retired doctor, was killed in her home in Paris and her body defenestrated. The perpetrator was a 27-year-old man who shouted “Allahou Akbar” when committing the crime. He suffered from psychiatric problems. The court stated that, due to these problems, he could not be tried in a criminal court, a decision that was widely challenged.

Source: Kantor Center.

KILLING OF MIREILLE KNOLL (FRA-1358). ireille Knoll, an 85-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, was stabbed to death and her home in district 11 of Paris was set on fire. In 1942, Knoll had managed to escape from the roundup in the Vél d’Hiv, in which more than 13,000 Jews, including 4,000 children, were detained by French police under the Vichy regime and transferred to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Knoll’s mother, the holder of a Brazilian passport, managed to escape to Portugal with Mireille. Knoll later returned to Paris, where she married another Holocaust survivor. He died a few years before she was killed. Once widowed, she lived alone in her apartment. On 23 March 2018 two young men attacked her in her home; they were later accused of a hate crime due to its anti-Semitic nature. It later became known that one of the accused, a Muslim of Maghrebi origin and a neighbour of the victim, had a police record for sexual abuse.

Source: Kantor Center.

KILLING OF A PERUVIAN TRANSGENDER PERSON (FRA-1407).
On 17 August 2018 Vanessa Campos, a 36-year-old transgender woman of Peruvian origin who worked as a prostitute and did not have residence papers, was killed in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. The attackers belonged to a gang that robbed and harassed clients who, pursued by a new law, sought out prostitutes in the woods.

Source: SOS Homophobie, The New York Times.

TRANS PERSON KILLED IN ITALY (ITA-164). In 2015, a transgender woman was killed in Italy and her body thrown into a garbage container.

Source: Transgender Europe.

KILLED FOR REJECTING HER MURDERER (ITA-717). A young woman, Elisa Pomarelli, was killed by Massimo Sebastiani, a man whose advances she had refused and who spread a rumour that she was a lesbian. The aggressor, who confessed to the crime, killed Elisa on 25 August 2019 in Piacenza.

Source: Gay Center, Il mesaggero.

THE ARTIST UMBERTO RANIERI KILLED (ITA-720). In June 2019 an 18-year-old man of Tunisian origin was arrested and accused of killing the Umberto Ranieri (55 years of age) by punching him to death in Rome. The attack took place in public, and the aggressor was arrested. Arcigay considers that there was a homophobic motive behind the crime.

Sources: ILGA-Europe, ArciGay.

(ITA-721). A 52-year-old man from Bologna was found dead in a car park in Castelfranco.

Source: ILGA-Europe, ArciGay.

HOMOSEXUAL MAN KILLED AFTER A RENDEZVOUS (ESP-369). AAlberto Enrique Ferrer, 42 years of age, ran a hairdressing salon in Valencia. In September 2017 he arranged to meet a Swedish drug dealer called Pierre Danilo Larancuent via a dating app. Larancuent had previously been in prison and suffered from mental issues. Ferrer’s body was later found, dismembered, in a garbage container.

Sources: Spanish Observatory against LGBTphobia, Las Provincias.

KILLING OF AN LGTBI ACTIVIST (ESP-570). The 60-year-old LGTBI activist Fernando Lumbreras was beaten and strangled to death in his home in Valencia by a man of Georgian origin, Shalva E., on 3 December 2018. Activist associations related the crime to anti-LGTBI intentions. Shlava E. was declared guilty of homicide but was absolved of theft with violence.

Sources: Spanish Observatory against LGBTphobia, El Mundo.

TRANS MIGRANT PERSON STABBED (ITA-298). A transgender migrant woman was stabbed to death in a park. The police detained a suspect.

Sources: Transgender Europe.

MAYOR STABBED (POL-490). The Mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, was stabbed by a 27-year-old man with a police record for several offences, Stefan W., on 13 January 2019. The events occurred during a charity ceremony in the city in which the Mayor encouraged local residents to raise funds. Adamowicz suffered wounds to his vital organs, and died the following day. After the stabbing, the aggressor grabbed a microphone and justified his act for having been “unjustly imprisoned and stabbed”. Adamowicz had expressed his support for refugees and LGTBI persons, for which he was criticised by members of the Extreme Right.

Sources: How hate kills, Hate crimes in Poland in 2019, Open Dialogue, El País.

MEMBER OF THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC UNION KILLED IN HIS HOME BY AN EXTREMIST. Lübcke was known for his pro-immigration opinions. He received death threats after saying in a public meeting that people were free to leave the country if they opposed helping asylum-seekers.

RACIST KILLED IN ROUEN (FRA-1492). The 31-year-old Guinean researcher Mamoudou Barry died following an attack by a man who shouted racist insults at him in Rouen in July 2019. The victim was the father of a 2-year-old child. The alleged aggressor, a 29-year-old man with a police record, was sent to a psychiatric institution.

Sources: SOS Racisme, Le Monde.

(ITA-001). The circumstances are unknown, as it was a crime included in the first report of the OSCE in 2015 (data not provided).

Source: OSCE.

TUNISIAN TORTURED TO DEATH (ITA-171). In May 2016 Mohamed Habassi, a 34-year-old Tunisian, was brutally tortured in a rented apartment on the outskirts of Parma. The aggressors, a group of six men, were led by the owner of the apartment, who decided to attack the victim alleging that he had not paid the rent for several months. Habassi was the father of a boy who had already lost his mother in a road accident; the boy lived with his grandparents in Tunisia.

Source: Lunaria, SETA, Il fatto quotidiano.

NIGERIAN KILLED BY A FANATIC (ITA-172). Emmanuel Chidi Namdi, a 36-year-old refugee of Nigerian origin, died after being attacked in Fermo. The attacker was a fanatical follower of the local football team who had previously insulted Mr Chidi’s wife. Mr Chidi came to her defence and was struck with a traffic sign. The couple, who had fled from Boko Haram, were living in a religious institution and had requested asylum in Italy.

Source: Lunaria, SETA, Euronews, ABC.

(ITA-314). Niang Maguette was a 54-year-old Senegalese woman who had been in Italy for 30 years, earning a living as a street vendor in Rome. In May 2017 a police operation was conducted against groups of these vendors, including Niang. The circumstances of her death were not clarified, despite an inquiry by the Prosecutor’s Office. The Chief of Police in Rome, Antonio di Maggio, stated that there was no direct relation between the operation and Niang’s death.

Sources: Lunaria, OSCE, The Local, Getty Images.

EGYPTIAN STUDENT RUN OVER (ALE-702). Shaden Mohamed Al-Gohari, a 22-year-old Egyptian student was run over and killed in the German city of Cottbus. The occupants of the car later shouted racist and xenophobic slogans against refugees.

Source: FAIR.

DIED AFTER BEING CHASED (ITA-558). In July 2018, a 43-year-old Moroccan man died in Aprilia (Latina, Italy) in an accident that occurred as two Italian men started to chase him, suspecting that he was a thief. In the chase, the victim’s car left the road and the occupant died in the collision.
Source: LUNARIA, La Stampa.

A YOUNG MAN FROM MALI DIED FROM A SHOT IN THE HEAD WHILE HE WAS COLLECTING SCRAP (ITA-555).Soumaila Sacko was 29 years old when he was killed in Calabria. He was from Mali and was in Italy legally. He worked outdoors and did what he could to earn an honest living. In June 2018 he was with friends collecting scrap from a factory when a vehicle approached and the driver fired shots at Soumaila and his companions. One of the bullets hit him in the head and he died later in hospital.
Source: The local.

Source: The local.

SIX SHOTS AT POINT-BLANK RANGE AGAINST A STREET VENDOR (ITA-577). In March 2018, Idy Diene, a 54-year-old street vendor from Senegal working in Florence, was killed by Roberto Pirrone. The police determined that the detainee had fired six shots at point-blank range against Idy, who was selling his wares on a bridge in the city. The Mayor of Florence expressed his sympathy and solidarity with the Senegalese community. The police did not find a racist motive behind the attack, but neither did they provide any rational explanation for the crime. Representatives of the Senegalese community believe that it was a racist killing due to the general political climate in Italy at the time.

Sources: LUNARIA, SETA, UNHCR, CNN, Business Day.

GHANANIAN GUNNED DOWN WHILE RIDING A BICYCLE (ITA-892). On 28 March 2019 in Borgo Mezzanone, in the Italian province of Foggia, a 51-year-old Ghanaian, Daniel Nyarko, was shot while riding a bicycle. He looked after a property and had avoided the theft of agricultural vehicles there. The thieves were arrested; they had been released from prison a few days before. His body remained in the mortuary for four months, until three associations −the Association of Immigrants for Integration and Social Motivation (Aiims), the Trade Union Association of Ghana in Puglia, and Caritas de San Severo− began a campaign to raise funds for his burial.

Sources: LUNARIA, Il fatto quotidiano.

A SENEGALESE MAN WHO WASHED CAR WINDSCREENS WAS BRUTALLY RUN OVER BY A CLIENT (ITA-923). Modou Diop was a 29-year-old Senegalese man who washed car windscreens at traffic lights in in the Italian region of Campania. According to the inquiry, on 18 February 2019 he had an argument with Giovanni Buonanno, a 22-year-old man with a police record. In response, Buonanno ran him over and caused injuries that led to his death a few hours later. The aggressor was sentenced to 14 years in prison for first-degree murder.

Sources: Lunaria, Il Mattino.

FAILURE TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE LEADING TO DEATH (POL-702). A 36-year-old Ukrainian man called Wasyl, who worked in a coffin workshop near Nowy Tomyśl, fainted and fell unconscious. The owner of the business asked the other employees to leave the premises and left the man’s body in a forest one hundred kilometres away. The corpse was accidently discovered the next day. Various Ukrainian workers covered up for the boss, under the threat of reprisals.

Sources: Open Dialogue, AP News.

MOROCCAN SHOPKEEPER STABBED TO DEATH BY CUSTOMERS (ESP-539). Mouad A., a 23-year-old Moroccan man who ran a tea shop in the town of Leganés, near Madrid, was killed in November 2018 after telling some customers that he was about to close the premises. The customers became violent and a fight started, in which Mouad was stabbed in the chest and later bled to death. One month later the police arrested seven individuals for their involvement in the murder.

Sources: El Mundo, El Confidencial, Unión de Comunidades Islámicas de España.

A YOUNG ALGERIAN DIED FOLLOWING AN ATTACK (ESP-575). S. H., a 20-year-old Algerian man, died from stab wounds following a scuffle in Zaragoza. The attack took place in a popular drinking area in the city in the early hours of November 2018.

Sources: Unión de Comunidades Islámicas de España, La Vanguardia.