New evidence delays Sherbini case verdict

New evidence has delayed the announcement of a German court's verdict for the man who murdered Egyptian Muslim woman Marwa el-Sherbini.

In July, Alex Wiens stabbed 18 times Sherbini in front of her three-year old son in a Dresden courtroom as the Muslim woman was testifying against him.

When Sherbini's husband rushed to help her, a security guard confused him for the attacker and shot him.

The court's new evidence is Wiens' Russian military pass, which shows the Russian army did not draft him for medical reasons, a spokesman for the Dresden state court said.

The court also received information from Russian authorities saying he was discharged because he was believed to have 'indifferent schizophrenia', said Peter Kiess.

The new information means a court-appointed psychologist who had earlier deemed Wiens to be fully responsible for his actions now has to reevaluate his findings.

The prosecutor has asked for a life sentence for 29-year-old Wiens, an unemployed ethnic Russian.

The murder of Sherbini, a pharmacist who was three months pregnant, stirred outrage in the Muslim world, especially in her native Egypt. Many have accused Germany of lax security and failure to protect its minority Muslim population amid a new wave of hatred against Arabs.

In 2003, Sherbini moved to Dresden after her husband received a scholarship to study genetic engineering in the Max Planck Institute. He was scheduled to present his doctoral thesis when Sherbini was killed.