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Security van man turns himself in and reveals buried millions

A man who stole millions of euros from a security van he was in charge of and disappeared to Spain has turned himself in to police and led to the booty he had buried in a field near Neu-Ulm.

Published: 23 November 2008 10:55 CET

Security van man turns himself in and reveals buried millions

Photo:DPA

The 36-year-old man, named only as Metin Y., became the subject of an international arrest warrant after he made off with the money at the end of October.

The security van was found empty in a car park in Ulm, but Metin Y. was nowhere to be found.

Detectives followed up on some 160 clues, and the case was featured on television with appeals for information, to no avail. But on Friday police received a hot tip from Barcelona where Metin Y. had checked into a hotel under a false name.

The same day a lawyer called the Ulm police and said Metin Y. wanted to give himself up.

Officers got a phone call on Saturday with instructions on how to find the field where the money was buried.

There they not only found nearly all the money, but also Metin Y., waiting for his arrest.

Detectives are now trying to establish what happened to the small portion of the money which is missing, as well as to determine whether Metin Y. had help in fleeing Germany.

They say he has refused to tell them anything.

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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