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CRIME

Brother suspected in death of Hamburg girl

German police are seeking the brother of a 16-year-old Hamburg girl of Afghan descent who died early on Friday morning of multiple stab wounds.

Published: 16 May 2008 13:00 CEST
Brother suspected in death of Hamburg girl
Medical personnel try to save the Hamburg girl. Photo: DPA

Neighbours and a passing group of youths in Hamburg’s Sankt Georg district heard the girl screaming near the Berliner Tor metro stop and called police at 11:21 pm on Thursday.

The girl died about an hour later despite the efforts of emergency medical personnel to revive her, Hamburg police spokesman Andreas Schöpflin told The Local. Witnesses did not see anyone running away, he said.

Police have not ruled out the possibility that the stabbing could have been an honour killing, Schöpflin said. Homicide investigators and the district attorney’s office in Hamburg are seeking the girl’s 23-year-old brother.

“I cannot exclude the possibility of an honour killing, but I cannot confirm it either,” Schöpflin said.

Both siblings are German citizens who immigrated from Afghanistan. Schöpflin could not say how long they had been in the country.

Schöpflin also declined to confirm a report from German newspaper Bild on Friday that the girl had been stabbed 20 times.

A crisis intervention team is caring for the girl’s family.

A series of six honour killings in Berlin – including the shooting at a bus stop of 23-year-old Turkish woman Hatun Sürücü – shook Germany in 2005. Sürücü’s youngest brother, Ayhan Sürücü, later confessed to killing her because he did not approve of her Western lifestyle.

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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