A High-Profile Trial Against an Internet Predator Nicknamed White Tiger Has Begun in Hamburg 0 16

This case sheds light on the dark world of sadistic online exploitation, where predators seek out vulnerable young people and manipulate them into committing acts of self-harm, violence against themselves or animals, or suicide. The trial will be complex. The proceedings are held behind closed doors.

The identification of the defendant, a 21-year-old citizen of Germany and Iran living in Hamburg, has only been partially disclosed. He is identified as Shahriar J. under German privacy protection laws. The criminal has been held under strict observation in a youth prison on the Hanöfersand peninsula.

Shahriar J. is accused of pedo-sadism: in January 2022, he drove a 13-year-old transgender teenager living near Seattle, USA, to suicide.

It is believed that he used a minor Finnish girl for this purpose. He contacted her in 2021. It is alleged that he manipulated her into submission. With a perverse mix of expressions of love and contempt, he allegedly made her engage in self-harm, and in 2022, to connect with boys from the USA.

The Finnish girl met a 13-year-old teenager from Washington on a suicide forum. This occurred in mid-January 2022. White Tiger allegedly joined and, in a group chat on Instagram, drove the boy to suicide by hanging in a parking lot. The teenager broadcast his death live. The criminal reportedly filmed and posted the sadistic act online.

"The crimes go beyond human imagination," said Hamburg's Attorney General Jörg Fröhlich.

Shahriar is believed to have committed crimes against more than 30 children in hundreds of cases since January 2021, when the suspect was 16 years old — and therefore he is being tried in a juvenile court behind closed doors.