German court told Palestinian killed local man because he was ‘rich Jew’

A Palestinian accused of killing a German man said he had targeted a “rich Jew,” a witness says during the murder trial.

The 31-year-old Palestinian man, identified in court as Iyad B., is accused along with an accomplice of strangling real estate investor Michael Reicher in November. The witness, a barber, says the accused said he had targeted a “rich Jew” whose people “destroyed my homeland,” according to a report in the local newspaper Shwartzwalder Bote.

The case is being heard in Horb am Neckar in the southern German state of Baden-Wurttemberg.

It is not clear whether Reicher, 57, is actually Jewish, according to the Jerusalem Post, which first reported the case in English. Reicher helped a local synagogue renovate its sanctuary and worked to assist Syrian refugees.

Iyad’s alleged accomplice was a Syrian refugee, Mohammed Omran Albakr, 28, who allegedly came up with the plan to attack and rob Riecher, with whom he had business dealings.

— JTA