German court jails trucker for life over hitchhiker murder

September 18, 2019   

(AFP) A German court sentenced a Moroccan trucker Wednesday to life in jail after finding that he murdered a 28-year-old student hitchhiker last year in a case pounced on by the far right.

The 42-year-old driver named as Boujemaa Lamrabat, a Moroccan who lives in Spain, has been found guilty of killing Sophia Loesche to cover up the fact that he had severely injured her in a previous beating.

The court sided with the prosecution’s call for a life sentence for murder rather than the defence’s request for a lighter punishment for manslaughter.

Loesche had been hitching from her university in Leipzig, Saxony, towards her family home in Amberg, Bavaria, in June 2018 when she went missing.

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