2 convicted of homophobic attack that killed German musician

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BERLIN (AP) — A court in Berlin has convicted two men of killing a German pop musician in an apparent homophobic attack.

A regional court in the German capital on Tuesday found the Polish defendants guilty of manslaughter and serious sexual assault in the death of 47-year-old Jim Reeves.

The defendants claimed to have been drunk during the February 2016 attack in a Berlin hostel. Judges said they brutally beat Reeves and repeatedly impaled him with a chair leg.

Reeves died of multiple internal injuries.

German news agency dpa quoted judges saying the attack expressed the men’s “degrading, homophobic feelings.”

The defendants, who are 31- and 24-years-old, were sentenced to 14 and 13 years imprisonment, respectively. Their names weren’t released due to German privacy rules.

Reeves had a number of dance hits in Germany in the 1990s. NVG

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