Murder of Marwa El-Sherbini

Marwa El-Sherbini was an Egyptian pharmacist born in 1978 in Alexandria, Egypt, who earned a pharmaceutical sciences degree from Alexandria University in 2000 and had played for the Egypt national handball team. In 2005 she moved to Bremen, Germany, with her husband, Elwy Ali Okaz, and the couple relocated to Dresden in 2008 after Okaz took a doctoral research position at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. El-Sherbini worked at a Dresden hospital and a local pharmacy, and helped found a voluntary association working toward an Islamic cultural and education centre in the city. At the time of her death she was three months pregnant with the couple's second child.

On 21 August 2008, El-Sherbini and Alex Wiens, an ethnic German immigrant from Russia, quarrelled at a Dresden playground over whose child should use a swing; Wiens shouted abuse at El-Sherbini, who wore an Islamic headscarf, calling her 'Islamist' and 'terrorist.' She called police, and Wiens was charged with criminal defamation. After he objected to a penalty order, the district court of Dresden found him guilty and fined him €780 in November 2008; during that trial Wiens argued that 'people like her' were not truly human and could not be insulted. The public prosecutor appealed for a custodial sentence given the incident's xenophobic character, and Wiens appealed as well.

The appeal hearing was held at the regional court in Dresden on 1 July 2009, with El-Sherbini testifying as a witness while her husband and their three-year-old son observed; no security screening took place, in line with standard practice. During the hearing, Wiens said Muslims were 'monsters' to him and that he would vote for the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. As the family tried to leave after her testimony, Wiens attacked El-Sherbini with a kitchen knife he had brought into the courtroom, stabbing her more than fifteen times. Okaz was stabbed at least sixteen times protecting his wife, and their son was injured while being moved to safety. Responding to a security alarm, a federal police officer mistook the wounded Okaz for the attacker and shot him in the leg before Wiens was identified and apprehended. El-Sherbini died in the court building at 11:07; Okaz survived after a two-day coma and weeks of hospital treatment.

Wiens was formally charged on 25 August 2009 with murder, attempted murder, and grievous bodily harm. His trial opened on 26 October 2009 at the Dresden upper regional court under heightened security following reported threats against him. On 11 November 2009 the court convicted Wiens of murdering El-Sherbini and attempting to murder Okaz, finding the offense 'heinous' because it was committed in front of a child, against two people, in a court of law, and out of hatred toward foreigners. He received the maximum sentence, life imprisonment, and was ordered to compensate Okaz and El-Sherbini's family. The Federal Court of Justice rejected his appeal on 18 June 2010, making the conviction final.

A separate inquiry examined the officer who shot Okaz and the judge who presided over the July 2009 hearing, on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter and denial of assistance; Dresden prosecutors closed both investigations on 21 December 2009 without indictment, concluding the officer had mistaken Okaz for the attacker because both men were covered in blood and each was in contact with the knife. El-Sherbini's killing drew large protests across Egypt and other Muslim-majority countries, prompted a German government statement of condolence, and was followed by public memorials in Berlin and Dresden, a 2012 scholarship established in her name, and a planned memorial plaque at the regional court building.