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CRIME

Report says Berlin a hub for Vietnamese traffickers

Berlin has developed into a European centre for Vietnamese human traffickers, prompting German and French authorities to set up a joint group to combat crime, a German magazine has reported.

Published: 5 October 2008 14:56 CEST
Report says Berlin a hub for Vietnamese traffickers

German news magazine Focus said that the joint Franco-German investigation team would include two Berlin state prosecutors, five officers of Germany’s criminal police, three investigators from Germany’s federal police and an equal number of French experts.

The team is to combat Vietnamese human traffickers who have made Berlin a European hub for their business deals, the magazine reported, quoting unnamed security sources.

Berlin state prosecution authorities estimate that more than 1,000 Vietnamese nationals are smuggled each over year to Berlin via China, Russia, Belarus, Poland and the Czech Republic. From Berlin, they are then smuggled via Calais and through the Eurotunnel to Britain.

The report said that many of the Vietnamese were made to work on roofed plantations in Britain growing illegal marijuana to pay off their travel costs.

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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