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CRIME

Man confesses to raping German teen at Austrian border

A man has admitted to raping a teenage girl who was snatched on Christmas Eve in southern Germany and taken forcibly over the border to Austria, police said on Friday.

Published: 2 January 2009 19:07 CET
Man confesses to raping German teen at Austrian border
A police photo of the suspect's car. Photo: DPA

The 25-year-old suspect also confessed to abducting and raping an 18-year-old woman from Chemnitz on December 20, and attacking a third one on December 24, who managed to escape, Upper Austria police chief Alois Lissl told the Austria Press Agency after talks with his German counterparts.

The man, who lives in Biberbach in Lower Austria, gave himself up to police in Berlin on Wednesday, after the media reported widely about the latest case. According to police, he snatched his 16-year-old victim as she headed to work before dawn in the German town of Regensburg on December 24, forcing her into the trunk of his car by threatening her with a knife. He then drove across the border to Austria where he raped her before

letting her go.

Police initially voiced doubts about the young woman’s story but they have since found the suspect’s knife and located where she was raped, Lissl said.

The suspect apparently also forced his first victim into his car trunk on December 20 before raping her and throwing her off a bridge into a river. The 18-year-old survived the 10-metre (32.8-foot) fall with serious injuries, Lissl added.

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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