A failed asylum seeker who raped and murdered a 14 year old Jewish girl has been sentenced by a German court to life in prison.

Ali Bashar, 22, who came to Germany from Iraq together with his family in 2015, befriended Susanna Maria Feldman via his younger brother.

Three years later, he met the young girl in a wooded area in Wiesbaden, in western Germany, where they both lived. He assaulted her, before going on to rape her and strangle her to death, burying the body in a shallow grave.

Bashar’s asylum application had been rejected in 2016, but he had been allowed to remain in Germany pending an appeal.

After the murder, he used his victim’s phone to text her mother, pretending that the young girl had run off to Paris with another man.

Susanna’s body was found two weeks after her murder, by which time Bashar and his family had left Germany and returned to Iraq.

But despite Germany and Iraq having no extradition treaty, in a joint operation days after the body was found Kurdish security forces arrested the 22-year old in Northern Iraq and handed him over to German commandos, who brought him back to the country to face justice.

Bashar subsequently confessed to killing Susanna Feldman but denied raping her, claiming that they had consensual sex but that she had afterwards threatened to call the police.

Bashar is also accused of twice raping another girl aged 11.

The high profile murder led to great anger in Germany, where the far right have attempted to use the killing to promote anti-migrant policies.

But in the political mainstream, questions have also been raised about the failure of the German police to act until five days after Susanna went missing, how the Bashar and his family were reportedly able to flee the country using fake identities, and why, his asylum application having failed two years prior, he had been allowed to remain in Germany that long.

Sentencing Bashar on Wednesday, the judge in the Susanna Feldman trial described how the defendant had “voiced no sincere word of regret”, showing “neither remorse nor empathy.”

He described the accused as being guilty of “coldblooded murder” and deemed his crime to be of “exceptional severity”, meaning that Bashar is unlikely to have the opportunity of parole in 15 years’ time, as is often the case in Germany.

In a letter written to the killer before the trial, Susanna’s mother, Diana described how her daughter’s death had meant that "part of my future and my heart disappeared".

She said that she had “already received life imprisonment, although I am not guilty. I will never get a chance for a pardon."