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CRIME

Autopsy shows dead Neustadt baby was alive at birth

Saxon authorities have determined that a lifeless infant found on Friday in a family home in Neustadt was born alive.

Published: 4 August 2008 14:14 CEST

The exact cause of the infant’s death will be determined in the coming days after the autopsy analysis is finished, the public prosecutor’s office in Dresden said on Monday.

The infant’s 20-year-old mother was arrested on Saturday and remains in police custody under suspicion of manslaughter. Her grandparents, with whom she lives, discovered the child concealed in a duffel bag in their cellar. According to preliminary investigation, no one in the mother’s social circle was aware of her pregnancy.

Four dead infants have been discovered in the German state of Saxony so far this year.

Germany has been plagued with a spate of gruesome infanticide cases in the last few years which have shocked the country. One woman who killed nine of her babies was sentenced to 15 years in prison in early April.

In May, a 44-year-old woman was arrested when her family found three dead babies in her freezer near Bonn.

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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