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CRIME

German border town mobilizes against student ‘drug trail’

Officials in the German city of Kaldenkirchen are mobilizing against German students taking "holiday excursions" through the border town to buy marijuana in the Netherlands, police announced on Tuesday.

Published: 24 June 2008 15:34 CEST
German border town mobilizes against student 'drug trail'
Dave? Dave's not here, man. Photo: DPA

The so-called “drug trail” aggravates the town’s residents, especially during school vacations, according to police in Viersen, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Large groups of young “drug tourists” use the city to cross the border and buy grass at coffee shops. Police said they ride the train to the border and then walk the rest of the way to coffee shops on the other side, leaving trash, urine, and noise in their wake.

Authorities said they will warn students on the road to dissipation against hash addiction. Those students with addiction problems will be offered counseling.

Police plan to stop the traffic, informing the parents of juveniles, and fining older students.

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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