German teenager sentenced to 10 years for murdering peer

A 15-year-old in Germany has been sentenced to 10 years of juvenile detention for the murder of a 14-year-old, in a case that shocked the country, reported dpa.

The sentence has to be carried out in a social therapeutic institution, a regional court in Hanover ruled on Monday.

The teenager was also convicted of 12 counts of attempted robbery and extortion.

The murder trial was not open to the public and details on the reasons for the verdict were not given.

The violent death of the teenager at the end of January caused a shock throughout Germany.

The two then 14-year-olds had met to play in the northern German city of Hanover, but only one of them returned home. The father of the second boy reported his son missing.

During the search, the other eighth-grader allegedly told the police that he had killed and hidden his peer. The boy's body was eventually found on the wasteland of a former garden centre.

According to earlier statements by the public prosecutor's office, the victim had been tied up and beaten to death with stones. A post-mortem examination revealed blunt force trauma as the cause of death.

There may have been an accomplice: there are "indications that another youth may have been present or involved in the crime," said the spokeswoman of the Hanover public prosecutor's office.

The accused spoke in the trial about a possible participant, dpa learned. The investigations are ongoing.