A court in Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany, began Tuesday the trial of death of Greek-born 20-year-old Philippos Tsanis, who last June was fatally wounded after a violent beating while returning from his sister’s graduation party in Bad Oienhausen.

According to Focus magazine, the charge filed today by prosecutor Christoph Mackel is homicide and robbery against a person in incapacity to react.

The young expatriate was punched and kicked in the head, causing him to suffer severe brain damage and succumb to his injuries after two days.

The main accused is 18-year-old Syrian Muafak S., while two 19-year-old Germans, Nick R. and Ferdinand D., are charged with causing grievous bodily harm and stealing.

In reading the indictment, the prosecutor said Philippos Tsanis and the three perpetrators engaged in a confrontation without reason and without knowing each other. They met by chance in a park near where the victim’s sister’s graduation event was being hosted, when Tsanis and a friend were leaving. Christoph Mackel described the scene in detail, explaining that the 18-year-old Syrian man deliberately struck the victim in the legs so that he would fall and then struck him violently in the head with his hands and feet, “knowing that the 20-year-old could have died.”

The indictment cites robbery and larceny because the offenders took from the victim a bag containing money, a few grams of a drug substance and a perfume, which they shared. In fact, as the prosecutor said, one of the defendants “sprayed his neck with the perfume while the victim was lying unconscious on the ground.” However, according to the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, one of the co-defendants has incriminated the 18-year-old Syrian in his testimony.

Outside the courtroom, a assembled crowd booed the perpetrators, who arrived in the courtroom accompanied by a heavy police force. The victim’s father, Dimitris Tsanis, was also in the courtroom, and in a highly charged state, he shouted “murderers”.

The 20-year-old’s violent death had sparked a heated public debate over the issue of deporting foreign criminals, with the discussion even reaching the Bundestag. “Philip could be our son,” Christian Democratic Party (CDU) leader Friedrich Murch had said, calling it “not an isolated incident” and “uncontrolled immigration”. The perpetrators have one thing in common, “they are young people who came to Germany from other countries as immigrants and had every opportunity to live a life of freedom, but were driven to violence,” he stressed.

As the WDR network revealed, the relevant authorities had failed to pass on information to each other about the Syrian’s criminal record before the murder, which included repeated crimes since 2020 and the designation “on the threshold of delinquency”. Muafak S. arrived in Germany in 2016 at the age of 10 under the family reunification program, as his parents were already in the country. Authorities also appeared to have lost track of the 18-year-old and, when he moved to Bad Oeynhausen in October 2023, neither the police nor the immigration office received any information about his past.

The Bealefield district court has scheduled 19 days of hearings, which are expected to conclude in May 2025.