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CRIME

German postal worker stole 29,000 letters in 15 years

A woman who worked for the German post office has been suspended after police found 29,000 undelivered letters at her home, a prosecutor in the western town of Giessen said on Wednesday.

Published: 5 March 2008 18:29 CET
German postal worker stole 29,000 letters in 15 years

Prosecutor Reinhard Huebner told AFP some of the letters date from 15 years ago, but most were mailed in the past five years. He said the woman appears to have kept them because she hoped to find money inside, but investigators did not yet know how much cash the pile of correspondence yielded.

Huebner said she will face charges of “breach of professional secrecy and the postal code” and risks up to five years in jail if found guilty. A spokesman for the postal service, Thomas Kutsch, said all the letters will be passed on to their original destinations.

The letters will be accompanied by a note presenting our apologies to our clients,” said Kutsch. “The vast majority of people who work for us are honest and reliable and are also disappointed about what has happened,” he added.

CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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