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CRIME

Weed plantation found at Neuss drug clinic

Around 100 huge cannabis plants have been dug up and removed from the grounds of an addiction clinic in Neuss, near Düsseldorf.

Published: 15 August 2008 12:42 CEST
Weed plantation found at Neuss drug clinic
Photo:DPA

Police spokesman Willi Arnold told the Express newspaper, “It concerned a plantation which was hidden in the clinic grounds, along a wall. The two-metre plants will now be examined and then destroyed.”

Whoever it was who was hoping to grow their own smoke in this way will be sorely disappointed – the plants were nearly ready for harvest and already smelled strongly of cannabis, the paper reported.

“Perhaps someone wanted to take care of their own needs, or thought the spot would be particularly unsuspicious,” a worker at the St Alexius drug addiction clinic told the paper.

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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