A German-Afghan homeless Sajed Aziz, 23 was convicted and sentenced to three and a half years in prison for stabbing a rabbi in the stomach last year. Aziz was convicted in Frankfurt state court of serious bodily injury in connection with the September attack on Orthodox Jewish rabbi Zalman Gurevitch during an altercation on a Frankfurt street. For a longtime the public and officials were convinced about anti-Semitic motives of Aziz leading to the confrontation. The process, however, showed that the reality was much more banal. While ideological motives could not be verified, it was proven that the stabbing resulted from an escalating quarreling between the two, after Gurevitch confronted Aziz physically. Whereas Gurevitch claims that Aziz said some anti-Semitic insults before he decided to confront him, Aziz assured that he had greeted the Rabbi only with a Salam-Alaikum when passing. Both men are police-known hotheads, who had been involved in many quarrellings in the past. Gisela Friedrichsen reports.
