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CRIME

Industry boss sentenced to jail in Italy

An Italian court on Friday sentenced German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp's director-general in Italy to 16.5 years in jail for the deaths of seven workers after a fire at its Turin plant in December 2007.

Published: 16 April 2011 09:44 CEST
Industry boss sentenced to jail in Italy
Photo: DPA

Harald Espenhahn was convicted by a court in Turin in the north of the country of “voluntary homicide”, a first in Italy for a workplace accident.

Seven workers died days and weeks after suffering severe burns when a fire broke out at the steel plant’s thermal treatment department.

The fire was one of the worst in Italy and sparked a public debate over health and safety regulations.

Four other executives were convicted of complicity by carelessness and sentenced to 13.5 years in prison, and a fifth received a 10-year jail term. ThyssenKrupp was also fined one million euros.

The steelmaker called the verdict against Espenhahn “incomprehensible and in explicable,” in a statement released in Italy, adding that its attorneys would look into what can be done about it.

The defence had claimed the trial was “political.”

AFP/bk

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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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