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CRIME

CDU politician arrested for alleged heroin smuggling

A Christian Democrat Union politician has been arrested for smuggling heroin, party colleagues confirmed on Saturday.

CDU politician arrested for alleged heroin smuggling
Photo:DPA

The 40-year-old candidate for a local council in Neckarsulm in Baden-Württemberg was arrested after police found 80 grams of heroin mixture packed up and ready to sell, as well as more than €5,000 in cash.

“This has hit us out of the blue. I am stunned and furious,” Thomas Strobl, secretary general for the party in Baden-Württemberg said. “If there is anything to these accusations, it would be clever of him to clearly distance himself from his political candidature.”

The police would not comment officially but sources say the CDU man and a younger man were arrested, accused of smuggling drugs from Holland to Germany.

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.

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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