It was Friday night in Dortmund as the small, physically impaired 41-year old Kurdish man from Mardin, Turkey – named Ibrahim Demir – was brutally murdered on his way home.
Ibrahim Demir lived in Dortmund for years. He was only 1.42 tall and had visited his mother that night. The last person to have seen him alive was the Kiosk’s clerk at 23:30, 300 metres from his home. At 1:00 a man noticed the victim and another man running away from the crime scene.
Demir was kicked several times on a sidewalk in an alley in downtown Dortmund, even when he was already on the ground. The emergency doctor summoned by the witness could no longer save the seriously injured, Demir died at the scene. A suspect has now been arrested.
According to the Dortmund public prosecutor’s office, 39-year-old Asir A. was found on Sunday. In the course of the investigation, he confessed. The victim’s family had launched a call on social media and appealed to witnesses to report. This call helped, as it took only hours to track the perpetrator down. At the time of his interrogation, Asir A. admitted that he physically abused Ibrahim D. Because of the urgent suspicion of assault with death, he was brought before the judge on Monday.
A look at the Facebook profile of the alleged perpetrator paints an unpleasant picture. Asir A. obviously has a deeply racist and fascist outlook and seems to be a supporter of the far-right “Gray Wolves”, as the members of the ultra-nationalist Turkish party MHP are called.
Şaziye Demir, the mother of Ibrahim Demir, told the media: “Someone has been threatening Ibrahim recently. I felt something was wrong with him, but every time I asked him he avoided me. Finally I asked him two to three days before he was murdered what depressed him. He said, mom, don’t get involved, otherwise he’ll kill you. ”
