BERLIN - A German court on Thursday sentenced an Afghan migrant to life in prison for raping and murdering a university student, as the country wrestles with security and integration concerns after taking in over a million migrants since 2015.
In December 2016 police detained the young Afghan man, who had arrived in the country at the height of the refugee crisis a year earlier. A test determined that his DNA matched that found near the site where a 19-year-old German female student had died in the southwestern city of Freiburg two months earlier.
A police autopsy found she had been a victim of sexual crime and violence before she drowned in a river.
In January, a government-sponsored study found that violent crime rose by about 10 percent in 2015 and 2016, and more than 90 percent of the rise was attributed to young male refugees, adding fuel to a political debate over the handling of the migrant crisis.