The 23-year-old Moussa O. must serve 12 years in prison for killing Maastricht resident Jacky Koker in his apartment on May 28 last year. That is the verdict of the Maastricht District Court against the Athens-born ironworker. Justice had demanded sixteen years in prison two weeks ago.

O. confessed during the investigation that he killed Koker with stabbings, but only after police discovered a letter in his cell explaining this in so many words to his girlfriend.

Storm

During the trial, O. invoked self-defense. He would have wanted to flee from Koker's apartment on Koningsplein after a cocaine deal got out of hand. It was a 'him or me' situation, he outlined at the hearing two weeks ago. Koker allegedly attacked him with a knife, whereupon O. stripped Koker of the knife and inflicted several fatal stabbings.

"Why didn't you run away when you had the knife?" the court then wanted to know. According to his lawyer Sjanneke de Crom, O. did not know what he was doing out of panic. , "It happened very quickly. Moreover, he knew there was another knife in the room."

Flights

The court does not go along with the emergency defense story because O. stabbed his victim four times in his and flank and back and also in the middle of the back, "in the spot you can't reach when you have an itch," prosecutor David van Kuppeveld said at the hearing. "It is not clear how O. got the knife, but when he had the knife the threat to him had ended. He could have avoided a confrontation with Koker, could have threatened and fled," the verdict reads.

Extra tragic about Jacky Koker's death is that the Maastricht addict and dealer was able to go to rehab four days later. A place had finally become available in a rehab clinic. That emerged from a letter Koker's 84-year-old father had read during the hearing. A day after the father received the news about his son, his wife died in the hospital. "The punishment cannot outweigh the grief of the bereaved family," the court said. Because of the family grief, the sentence does fall higher than the normal eight to 10 years set for similar homicide cases. Also playing into O.'s disadvantage is that he made his girlfriend A. co-responsible by telling her, "I did this for you." The fact that he tried to pin the blame on Maastricht resident H. also increased the penalty.

The defendant(s) in this case are assisted by: