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CRIME

Neo-Nazis take over train

Neo-Nazis on their way to May Day demonstrations in Hamburg took over part of a train and harassed passengers, daily newspaper Bild reported on Friday.

Published: 2 May 2008 12:51 CEST
Neo-Nazis take over train
NPD supporters march in Hamburg on May 1. Photo: DPA

A police spokesman confirmed to German news agency DDP that about 60 far-right agitators – some of them hooded – took over the first two cars of a regional train headed to Hamburg from Pinneberg in the eastern German state of Schleswig-Holstein on Thursday morning.

The newspaper initially reported only 20 neo-Nazis had entered the train.

The neo-Nazis blocked other travelers from entering the train, according to DDP, saying “this is a members-only affair.”

An emergency call from a witness reached police after the train had already arrived in Hamburg, the spokesman told DDP. Bild reported that police did nothing to stop the takeover.

The neo-Nazis shouted slogans including “after today foreigners and Germans will ride separately on Deutsche Bahn trains” and “foreigners ride in freight cars,” according to press reports.

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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