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CRIME

Neo-Nazi violence dropped in 2009

Police have registered a significant drop in right-wing extremist violence for 2009 compared to the previous year, daily Bild reported on Tuesday.

Published: 5 January 2010 09:00 CET
Neo-Nazi violence dropped in 2009
Photo: DPA

According to preliminary statistics from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), if December 2009 statistics follow the trend of the year’s first 11 months, then it will have been the first time in six year there was a reduction in right-wing violent crime.

Up until the end of November, 624 right-wing extremist crimes were registered in Germany. Compared to 682 during this time in 2008, this means a reduction of 8.5 percent, the paper said.

Meanwhile the number of victims injured in such crimes fell by 14 percent from 713 to 614, Bild reported.

But the number of neo-Nazi related crimes rose overall by 0.35 percent with the inclusion of crimes such as incitement of the people, Hitler greetings and swastika graffiti.

Compared to right-wing offences, leftist and anarchist crimes spiked by some 49.4 percent in the first three quarters of 2009 alone, the paper said.

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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