Not legally binding

Knifeman gets 18 years in prison for attempted murder

The jury decided "guilty" by 6:2 votes. A 22-year-old man of Afghan origin was sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment in Linz Provincial Court on Wednesday for allegedly stabbing a reveller in the stomach with a knife on the night of May 1st in Linz, causing life-threatening injuries. The verdict is not final.

The victim only survived thanks to emergency surgery. The defendant already has four previous convictions, two of which also involved a knife. Although he admitted to the stabbing during the criminal proceedings, he claimed to have acted in self-defense.

The murder weapon did not belong to him - he had a weapons ban - but he had found the knife during the scuffle beforehand and picked it up so that nobody would get hurt, he said. The later victim had been aggressive and had said "Give me the knife, otherwise you'll get into trouble".

"I was scared"
"I was just scared." He admits to having stabbed him, but "I didn't feel anything, I didn't know if I had hit him", he claims. The accused was represented by the well-known defense lawyer Andreas Mauhart.