°®Âþµº

"My vision went black and then it happened," Ali Bashar, 22, told the court through an interpreter. "I don't know how it could have happened."

Bashar left Germany for northern Iraq shortly after the May 2018 crime but was arrested and brought back in a mission joined personally by Germany's federal police chief.

His trial for the rape and murder of 14-year-old schoolgirl Susanna Maria Feldman started on Monday under tight security in Wiesbaden, the city where the killing took place. 

Around a dozen people held a vigil for the victim outside the courthouse.

For the murder alone, Bashar faces a likely life prison term, which in Germany usually translates to 15 years behind bars.

He denied rape and claimed in court that the two had consensual sex before she fell, got angry and threatened to call the police.

Shallow grave

In May last year, Bashar allegedly beat, raped and strangled Susanna to death in a wooded area near his refugee shelter.

Her body was then buried in a shallow grave covered with leaves, twigs and soil, near railway tracks.

When her remains were found two weeks later, Bashar and his family had left Germany for Erbil, northern Iraq.

However, he was arrested by Kurdish security forces and, despite the absence of a formal extradition treaty between Baghdad and Berlin, taken back to Germany.

In a controversial operation personally joined by federal police chief Dieter Romann, Bashar was put on a flight back to Germany, with pictures of him disembarking under heavy police guard making front pages.

Bashar also faces charges for a park robbery in which he allegedly beat, strangled and threatened a man with a knife to steal his watch, bag, phone and bank card.

He faces a separate trial from March 19, accused of having twice raped an 11-year-old girl - once in April 2018 after locking her in his room, and again near a supermarket carpark the following month.

Prosecutors have also laid charges against an Afghan youth, Mansoor Q., who was believed to be aged at least 14 at the time, also for the rape of the 11-year-old girl.

Prosecutors have said Bashar's younger brother - who is believed to be in Iraq, according to media reports - also took part in a sexual assault against the younger girl.

Follow us on Twitter: