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FOOTBALL

German football reporter makes bomb threat to delay plane

A German journalist covering the European football championship tried to delay his flight from the northern Italian city of Verona to Vienna by making a fake bomb threat, according to reports in the Italian media.

Published: 13 June 2008 08:16 CEST
German football reporter makes bomb threat to delay plane
'Yes, it's my flight...I mean THE flight to Vienna...' Photo: DPA

The 27-year-old showed up late at the Verona airport on Thursday and the ground personnel for airline Air Dolomiti told him he could no longer board the flight. That prompted the tardy hack to call the police to say there was a bomb onboard the plane.

The fake threat closed air traffic at the airport for several hours while the bomb squad checked out the airplane. But shortly after his anonymous call to the police, the German journalist went back to the check-in counter to say he had heard the plane was no longer preparing to take off.

Since no public announcement had been made on the departures board as to the flight’s status, the man quickly became the prime suspect for the bomb threat. His mobile phone then confirmed police suspicions and he was arrested.

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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