Berlin--A memorial for an Egyptian woman who was murdered inside a German court last year has been vandalized just weeks after being unveiled, police in the eastern city of Dresden said on Friday. Marwa El-Sherbiny, the mother of a three-year-old and pregnant with her second child, was stabbed 18 times last July by a man she was testifying against during an appeal hearing. Three of the knife-shaped columns that make up the memorial for the 31-year-old Egyptian woman were knocked over. Organizers of the memorial, Buerger Courage, plans to put up 18 columns in Dresden to symbolize the number of stab wounds. The July 1, 2009 courtroom killing sparked anger in several Islamic countries, where some accused Germany of tolerating xenophobia and anti-Islamic views. The German killer, a man of Russian origin, was convicted and given a life sentence. Sherbiny was stabbed when the man was appealing a conviction for insulting her by calling her an "Islamist," "terrorist" and "slut" when she asked him to make room for her son to play on swings in a playground. Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in western Europe after France. Some groups in Germany said after the murder Islamophobia was rife and criticized the German government for taking several days to condemn the murder.
