Trial of man accused of inciting teenagers to harm themselves begins

A 21-year-old man is on trial in Hamburg, accused of multiple cyber crimes, including forcing a 13-year-old to commit suicide on the Internet.

The man’s pseudonym is “White Tiger” and he is believed to be an important figure in the “764” international cybercrime organization.

He is accused of inducing children and teenagers aged 11 to 15 to commit acts of violence against him online.

Authorities said White Tiger’s victims were from Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, but his lawyers said the accusations were baseless and fabricated.

The FBI describes 764 as an international child exploitation enterprise and “a network of nihilistic violent extremists.” It also made a number of arrests.

The man, identified only as Shahriar J under German privacy laws, holds German and Iranian nationality. He was arrested last summer at his parents’ home in Hamburg.

He is accused of 204 offenses against more than 30 children and teenagers.

Hamburg prosecutors said the crimes were committed between 2021 and 2023.

Shahriar J allegedly made particularly vulnerable children emotionally dependent on him through social media. It is believed he used this connection to produce child pornography.

In some cases, he was accused of convincing his victims to commit suicide.

Prosecutors charged him with one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder “as a collateral perpetrator.”

All of his crimes are said to have been committed via the Internet.

German media reported that one of the victims, a 13-year-old boy from the United States, took his own life online in real time.

A 14-year-old Canadian girl also allegedly attempted suicide.

According to the charge sheet, the children seriously harmed themselves or performed sexual acts on themselves during live chats in front of an audience in order to satisfy Shahriar J’s demands for increasingly violent content.

The defendants are accused of recording this in order to threaten the children with making it public if they did not inflict more serious self-harm on camera.

The trial was held behind closed doors as some of the alleged crimes were committed when Shahriar J was a teenager.

Before the trial began, the 21-year-old’s defense lawyer Christiane Yüksel denied the accusations as baseless and fabricated. She called the prosecution’s contention of double circumstantial guilt in the murder charge “experimental.”

She said: “This idea of ​​so-called indirect crime is, by definition, incorrect and cannot be proven.”