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30 November 2005
STUTTGART, GERMANY – A 25-year-old Sri Lankan man who attacked a congregation in a German church with a samurai sword told a court Wednesday he had been acting on divine orders.
He has been indicted for the manslaughter of a 43-year-old woman. He wounded three other persons, including a 25-year-old man who lost a hand, which surgeons managed to sew back on again.
The Tamil accused testified to the court in Stuttgart, southern Germany that God had guided his hand during the April attack.
He had approached the chairman of the congregation and asked him, “Why are your wife and daughter so sexily dressed?”
Other members of the congregation at the Church of Christ had then rushed over to him.
“Jesus took hold of my hand and smote several times with the sword,” said the man, adding that God had been speaking regularly to him since 2003.
Prosecutors told the court they would produce evidence that the man suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and that they would apply for his detention in a mental hospital.
DPA
Subject: German news