On 3 December 2016, Freiburg police arrested Hussein Khavari, who had been identified by a hair found at the crime scene, and a CCTV recording from inside a tram.
"[9] According to police, Khavari's iPhone health tracking app provided "crucial evidence" in locating his exact movements while committing the crime.
[5][13] Following Khavari's arrest as a suspect for the rape, Stern wrote that in 2014, he had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for robbing a 20-year-old student and throwing her over a cliff in Corfu, Greece, in 2013.
[17] Khavari was released after one and half years in prison due to a general amnesty for juvenile offenders initiated by the Greek government.
[30] As the Iranian father of Khavari told the court via phone, there is an official document which states 29 January 1984 as date of birth of the accused.
[31] Psychiatrist Hartmut Pleines said in his report to the court that Khavari was neither schizophrenic nor showed any evidence of brain damage or retarded development, but had a low threshold to violence and a tendency towards manipulative influence, and that his bad character traits were the cause of his criminal behavior, "not a drug-addiction, nor his place of origin or being a Shia Muslim".
[32] Greek policemen, who had been involved in investigating the earlier crime of Khavari in Corfu, testified at the court in Freiburg that the suspect was "indifferent" during the interrogation and once had stated, "that's just a woman.
[35] The Los Angeles Times reported that the crime remained in the national news in Germany for "several weeks after her body was found.
Guido Wolf, Minister of Justice of Baden-Württemberg, called for a change in the code of criminal procedure to allow the police to determine the colour of hair, eyes and skin from a DNA sample.
[37] The scholars argued that the use of forensic DNA phenotyping technology, although not being really precise enough, may have adverse consequences for the individual, the society and the state of law, and that the ethical, legal and social implications should be discussed before using it.
[39] Sigmar Gabriel (SPD chairman) expressed his condolences, and also warned of incitement to hatred and said that "refugees can commit the same horrifying crimes as people born in Germany".
Rainer Wendt, head of the Deutsche Polizeigewerkschaft (German Police Union) said, "this and many more victims would not be, if our country had been prepared for the dangers that are connected to mass immigration.
"[40] AfD chief Jörg Meuthen said, "We are shocked about this crime, and realize at the same time, that our warnings of the uncontrolled immigration of hundreds of thousands of young men from patriarchal Islamic cultures were depreciated as populism.
[45] On 15 December 2016, the German Minister for the Interior, Thomas de Maizière blamed Greece for not releasing an international arrest warrant in the case.
"[12] Several German politicians, among them Boris Palmer (The Greens) and Thomas Strobl (CDU), Minister of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg, demanded better checks on the age of unaccompanied minors in reaction to reports that the perpetrator was probably not underage.