Athens: A teenage Afghan refugee accused of killing a student in Germany had been previously convicted and jailed for attempted murder in Greece, a police source said on Thursday.
The unnamed 17-year-old was sentenced to 10 years of jail in 2014 for pushing a woman off a cliff in Corfu but was released after serving little more than a year of his sentence as part of a Greek initiative to free up space in the country's packed prisons.
Despite strict conditions requiring him to report to police every month, officials lost trace of him two months after his release. He later travelled to Germany, although it was not immediately clear when.
On December 2, he was arrested in the southwestern German town of Freiburg in connection with the murder of a medical student who was found dead on the banks of the river Dreisam on October 16.
An autopsy found that the 19-year-old had drowned, with the Afghan teen's DNA found at the scene. Identified on CCTV, he is being held on suspicion of rape and murder.
The victim of the 2014 Corfu attack, a 20-year-old student survived and identified him as her attacker.
His identity as the same person involved in the German case was confirmed by cross-referencing his fingerprints, the police source told AFP.
A contentious case
The case has sparked a fresh wave of criticism in Germany over the country's liberal refugee policy.
The anti-migrant AfD party blamed the crime on the "uncontrolled" influx of foreigners but Chancellor Angela Merkel said that while any murder is to be condemned, the crime should not be used to target "an entire group".
The suspect arrived in Greece in January 2013 and claimed asylum. He was jailed in February 2014 by a youth court over the attempted murder.
Greek media slammed the authorities for their mis-handling of the prison release programme and for failing to alert the global policing agency Interpol that the teenager had fled.
Germany received 890,000 asylum requests in 2015, although that rate slowed to 213,000 from January to September 2016 following a deal with Turkey and a series of border closures on the Balkan route.
Public anger about the refugee arrivals has been stoked by several high-profile crimes involving migrants.
