German court jails Iraqi refugee Ali Bashar for life on rape and murder charges

The Iraqi man who killed a teenage girl in Germany was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, after a court heard that he had a serious personality disorder.

The judges in the city of Wiesbaden near Frankfurt found the 22-year-old Ali Bashar guilty of raping and murdering 14-year-old schoolgirl Susanna Maria Feldman.

In the verdict, presiding judge Jürgen Bonk said the defendant acted "in cold blood" and that his claims of feeling regret could not be taken seriously.

"It is only you and no one else who carries the blame for Susanna's death," Bonk added.

The man had arrived in Germany as a refugee and applied for asylum, but his application was rejected. He was living in Mainz, also near Frankfurt, when the crime took place in May 2018.

Ali B. had admitted the murder during the widely-publicized trial, but denied the rape charge.

He claimed that he and the victim had consensual sex outdoors and then got into an argument on the day of the murder.

The defendant told the court the girl had threatened to report him and then "everything went black," he claimed.

"I don't know how it could have happened," he said, before adding that he did remember hiding the body.

The girl's body was discovered almost two weeks after the crime, near train tracks in a wooded area of Wiesbaden. Investigators found that she had been strangled to death.