Iraqi asylum seeker Ali Bashar will be appealing a German federal court ruling that found him guilty of murdering Jewish teenager Susanna Feldmann.
The 22-year-old launched an appeal following his conviction in Wiesbaden, where a judge sentenced him to life in prison for the murder of the 14-year-old that took place in May 2018, German newspaper Die Welt reports.
The appeal will be examined by the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, and although Bashar admitted to murdering the teen, he denied in court that he raped her.
The appeal will run alongside another trial currently ongoing in which Bashar is accused of raping and sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl in the asylum home where he was living in April 2018.
Prosecutors allege that Bashar and another defendant, an Afghan migrant, later raped the victim again near a supermarket car park around a month later. The girl is said to have been raped on one more occasion by the Afghan defendant alone in a forest in either April or May 2018.
The murder of Susanna Feldmann made international headlines last year after her body was found by authorities in June and it was revealed that Bashar had fled the country to his native Iraq. Bashar was later arrested by Kurdish authorities and flown back to Germany.
Germany has seen a number of high-profile cases involving asylum seekers murdering young girls, from the case of 15-year-old Mia in Kandel to the case of Maria Ladenburger in Freiburg.
Neighbouring France has also seen similar cases, with two occurring this year alone. Last month, a Pakistani migrant, said to be in France illegally, was charged with the murder of a 23-year-old female student whose body was found in the trunk of her own car.
Only a month later, a Syrian migrant in Mont-de-Marsan was arrested in connection with the alleged rape and murder of a 24-year-old young mother who is believed to have had a minor mental disability.
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