At the beginning of November, a man forcibly took his then four-year-old daughter from his ex-wife’s apartment and drove with the child in his car onto the Hamburg airport grounds, breaking through three barriers. The defendant now attracted attention in court with an outburst of anger.
After the 18-hour hostage-taking at Hamburg airport, the defendant had an outburst of anger in the middle of his trial on Thursday. “What did we discuss there for 18 hours?” the Turk suddenly shouted loudly and excitedly after being translated by an interpreter. With that, he interrupted the presiding judge in the district court, who had just read out translated documents from the investigation.
The prosecution accuses the 35-year-old of hostage-taking, kidnapping of minors, intentional bodily harm and various weapons offenses. The background to the crime was a long-running custody dispute.
The defendant spoke angrily in Turkish, refused to be stopped by the judge and hit the table several times with his hand. What exactly he said remained unclear. After the man had calmed down, the judge appealed to him: “Can we agree that you stop freaking out like that?”
According to the interpreter, the defendant responded that this had to do with the personality of the judge in the custody dispute at the time. In addition, he had already spoken a lot in the 18 hours at the airport. “Screaming and banging on the table doesn’t help anyone,” stressed the presiding judge.
On November 4, the defendant had forcibly taken his then four-year-old daughter from his ex-wife’s apartment in Stade, Lower Saxony, and had driven with the child in a rental car onto the airport grounds by breaking through three barriers.
He called the police emergency number and demanded that a plane take him and his daughter to Turkey. He fired three shots into the air and threatened to blow himself and the child up with an explosive belt. After he surrendered, the explosives turned out to be dummies. At the start of the trial, the defendant had largely confessed to the crimes.