The Swiss canton of Aargau has reached an out-of-court settlement to pay 175,000 francs to a man convicted of raping and murdering a prostitute in 2008, after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled his detention beyond his youth sentence violated the European Convention on Human Rights. The offender, who was 17 at the time of the crime, had been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment under juvenile law, but was kept in custody using a civil-law for the protection of the public after he turned 22, the age limit for youth measures. Aargau authorities acknowledged the ECHR’s 2019 finding that the for-purpose detention was unlawful and that the public-safety rationale did not justify bypassing criminal law safeguards. The case has prompted political debate in Switzerland over a gap between juvenile and adult justice systems, with a similar subsequent case in the same canton further fuelling calls for reform.

In Argentina, a court in Mendoza province sentenced Ivan Maidana, a sushi chef, to 14 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of 19-year-old Giovanni Levi on a street near light-rail tracks in Las Heras in August 2025. According to court testimony, Maidana’s girlfriend told him that Levi had stolen her mobile phone the previous day; when they spotted the alleged thief, Maidana gave chase and stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife. The investigation found that the phone theft had never been reported to police, and Levi had no criminal record.

In Australia, a Western Australian court heard that Dennis McKenna, an 81-year-old serial paedophile who abused dozens of boys at a Katanning hostel in the 1970s and 1980s, is expected to be released from prison under strict supervision as soon as November, after serving 15 and a half years. Prosecutors argued he remains a high risk of reoffending against male children, but accepted that his advanced age and lengthy period without offending in the community could justify supervised release. Meanwhile, in Canada, the Parole Board of Canada granted Douglas Worth, 73, who raped, murdered and dismembered a 12-year-old girl in Ontario in 1987, leave privileges allowing him to stay away from his halfway house for up to three nights at a time. The board removed a requirement for him to follow a treatment plan for sexual deviancy, despite assessing him as an above-average risk for sexual violence, citing his completion of extensive programmes. The victim’s family expressed fear for their safety, and a request for a geographical restriction was denied.

In a separate Swiss case, the Bezirksgericht Zürich sentenced a 53-year-old Hungarian man to 13 years and 5 months in prison for the murder of a 64-year-old Swiss barkeeper in the Zurich Langstrasse nightlife district. The court heard that in August 2023, the assailant sprayed the victim with an irritant before stabbing him seven times with concealed blades, in an attack one witness compared to a scene from the film ‘Psycho’. The defendant was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and appeared in court in a palliative care bed; the judges ordered his detention and a 12-year ban from Switzerland, and awarded the victim’s partner damages of over 46,000 francs.