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CRIME

Search party finds girl’s corpse near lake

German police have discovered a girl’s corpse that could be the body of a girl reported missing in the city of Paderborn since Monday.

Published: 15 January 2009 17:16 CET
Search party finds girl's corpse near lake
Photo: DPA

The body was found on Thursday at the Möhnesee lake some 60 kilometres from Paderborn. Bits of her clothing had been found in the area on Wednesday.

Police await autopsy results and have not identified the victim, but they fear it could be the body of 8-year-old Kardelen, whom they have been looking for since Monday.

Some 100 officers and several search dogs had been combing the area for clues since early morning and the body was found near a dam wall.

The 30-man special task force investigating the case plans to post signs on roads between Sauerland and Paderborn asking commuters who may have witnessed suspicious activity to contact them.

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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