The woman was tied to the back of a car and dragged through the German city of Hamelin until the rope snapped. Photo / Getty
The woman was tied to the back of a car and dragged through the German city of Hamelin until the rope snapped. Photo / Getty
A man who tied a noose around the neck of his ex-wife and dragged her by car around a town in Germany as their 2-year-old child sat behind him has been jailed for 14 years.
Kader K, 28, sustained serious injuries as she was dragged over the asphalt and old cobblestones of Hamelin at high speed by the VW Passat driven by Nurettin B.
Their son Cudi watched screaming as he witnessed his mother's ordeal through the back window.
As he was sentenced, Nurettin B, who showed no emotion during his trial, turned to the woman whose life he had tried to end and said: "I am infinitely sorry for what I did to you and our son."
But she refused to look at him and clasped her hands over her ears as he spoke on Wednesday.
The court had heard Kader K was only saved when the rope snapped outside a fast-food restaurant in the town and passers-by rushed to her aid.
She lay in a coma for weeks after the brutal attack in November last year but was fit enough to appear to Hanover State Court to see her ex stand trial for attempted murder.
"I have hardly experienced a case where the intention to kill was so clearly visible," said her lawyer. "It is an absolute miracle that she is alive at all."
The couple are Turks with Kurdish roots and married in an Islamic ceremony in March 2013. Their son was born in January 2014 and in May 2015 they parted.
The man went to a police station to confess to the act. Photo / Getty
The judge blasted the "outdated" views that the accused held about women in general and his wife in particular that had "no place in modern times".
Nurettin B, 39, who is a German citizen, is said to have routinely beaten and abused Kader when they were together, and relations remained strained whenever they met to discuss Cudi's upbringing and maintenance payments.
It is alleged that a month before the attack in Hamelin, he told her: "One of you two will soon no longer be alive."
On the evening of November 20 a quarrel over money escalated into the brutal attempt on her life.
She was stabbed near to her heart before the rope was looped around her neck. She was struck over the head with the blunt side of an axe and her skull fractured.
Then he accelerated the car and drove her around the town.
After the rope broke in front of the Golden Chicken Grill restaurant he drove with his screaming child to the local police station where he told a desk officer: "It was me, it was me."
Kader K was only released from hospital six weeks ago. She has suffered brain damage and will need years of constant therapy.
Her lawyer, Roman von Alvensleben, said her son also suffered severe psychiatric trauma at witnessing this mother's ordeal. "He constantly wakes in the night and yells 'mama, ouch, mama, ouch."
"She wanted to testify in court even though she barely remembers the evening. She can no longer bring herself to say her ex-husband's name, referring to him only as 'the perpetrator'."
Nurettin B's lawyer Matthias Waldraff said: "It is a horrible, extreme event, but it does not indicate a cold-minded, sober-thinking perpetrator, but someone whose soul was completely destroyed. Nurettin B suffered from an extreme emotional tension.
"The act was the result of a very complex prolonged development, at the end of which helplessness was turned into hatred."
As well as the long prison term, Nurettin B must pay his victim more than $180,000 in compensation.
