An Afghan man has been sentenced to life in prison in Austria after trying to murder his 15-year-old daughter in a knife attack that prosecutors said was driven by claims of wounded family honor.
The 51-year-old attacked the girl on Nov. 24, 2025, in Vienna’s Donaustadt district, stabbing her more than a dozen times in the chest, back, and neck. The assault was so violent that the blade broke during the attack. The girl survived only after a doctor from a nearby clinic quickly provided emergency first aid.
As reported by Kronen Zeitung, the case was heard at the Vienna Regional Court and the sentence passed down on Tuesday. The court heard how the attack followed tensions inside the family over the girl’s relationship with a Romanian boy of the same age. Her father, who fled to Austria in 2004, allegedly regarded the relationship as unacceptable and claimed she had damaged the family’s honor.
In earlier statements to police, the teenager had described threats, violence, and control inside the family. She said she had been promised to an older Afghan man, was not allowed to make her own decisions about her life, and had been threatened along with her boyfriend and older sister.
🇦🇹🔴Arabs in Austria are creating UK-style grooming gangs targeting underage girls and turning them into sex slaves.
In many cases, the girls are ending up dead.
A psychiatrist who has worked with these underage prostitute victims says the girls give the same story: "They were… pic.twitter.com/KvzluuglmJ
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) May 14, 2026However, her testimony in court surprised those present. While her father remained in the room, the girl suddenly defended him and said she forgave him.
“My father is actually a very loving person. I was simply too rebellious. I love my father, and I forgive him for what he did,” she told the court.
When asked by the judge if she had been coerced into saying this, the girl replied, “What I’m saying, I say from the heart. If I had listened to my father back then, we would still be happy.”
NEW: 🇦🇹‼️ The Austro-Turkish mother accused of murdering her 10-day-old baby girl in a suspected "honor killing" will be defended by one of Austria's leading criminal defense lawyers, Astrid Wagner.
Wagner's client list includes incestuous rapist and murderer Josef Fritzl, and… pic.twitter.com/WRXDNhRohI
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) November 25, 2024She also told the court she had changed her view of what happened. “The way I know my father, that wasn’t him. I just know he wasn’t himself,” she said.
When asked about the allegations she had previously made to investigators, including claims of death threats and repeated violence, she said, “I made that up.”
According to ORF, the defendant said at police interview that he had the right to stab his daughter because she had a boyfriend.
He told the court there had been another argument that day and claimed he had been concerned about school and one of her friends, whom he described as a bad influence. “I was worried. I just wanted to calm her down a bit,” he said. “I was angry. I lost my temper. I actually wanted to slap her.”
The jury found him guilty of attempted murder and imposed the maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The Austrian case follows a series of high-profile honor-related crimes and alleged honor-related attacks across Western Europe in recent years.
In January, a Syrian man was sentenced in absentia in the Netherlands to 30 years in prison for murdering his 18-year-old daughter, Ryan, after accusing her of living too Western a lifestyle. His two sons were each sentenced to 20 years for their roles in the killing.
Ryan’s body was found in May 2024 in a marsh near the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve. Investigators found she had been bound with about 18 meters of duct tape before being thrown into the water alive. Her father fled to Syria.
The Dutch court described the killing as “a tragic low point in a family history in which the oppression of women was the common thread.”
In Sweden, a Palestinian family from Örebro was put on trial in September 2025 after abducting their 20-year-old daughter because she wanted to integrate into Western society. Prosecutors said the woman had lived under years of strict control, had been forced to wear a headscarf, and was not allowed to choose her friends or live independently.
Investigators found messages in which the father allegedly wrote in Arabic: “She must have her head cut off!” He later claimed the phrase was not meant literally. Other messages reportedly showed relatives objecting to her embrace of Swedish identity, with her older brother writing: “She loves Sweden and being Swedish.”
Germany has also seen several honor-related cases. In Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony, a Syrian father was accused in 2025 of ordering his 17-year-old son to kill his 19-year-old sister after she saved a boy’s phone number. The son refused and went to the police.
“He looked at me with a cold stare. No smile, nothing,” the boy told investigators. “Then he said, ‘You have to kill her. Make it look like an accident, like a fight. No one must know that she insulted my honor.'”
According to Bild, the daughter later said, “For five years, my father has been beating us daughters. We are not allowed to speak to boys or have contact with them.”
In another German case, a Somali migrant was put on trial last year, accused of stabbing his sister to death on her 23rd birthday after objecting to her assimilation into Western society. Prosecutors said handwritten notes found at the defendant’s home included the lines, “My sister is trying to be a slut” and “I can live without a future but not without honor.”
Sweden has also seen unresolved or partially unresolved cases with alleged honor-related motives. In May 2025, the Svea Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal of three Afghan-born individuals on murder charges over the killing of 37-year-old Ako Abbas, whose dismembered body was found in a suitcase in woodland on Värmdö in March 2024. The court convicted the defendants of lesser offenses, but no one was convicted of the killing itself. The main suspect remains at large.
