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CRIME

Missing Portuguese man found dead in Berlin river

A 27-year-old Portuguese man missing in Berlin since January was found dead in the Spree River by police officers on Friday.

Published: 6 March 2009 16:05 CET
Missing Portuguese man found dead in Berlin river
Photo: Christian Nordkvist for Exberliner Magazine

The city’s missing persons squad discovered the body of Afonso Freire de Novais Santos Tiago near the Schilling Bridge – not far from several popular Berlin clubs – using a boat with sonar equipment.

Friends and relatives had started an unprecedented search for the man after he disappearing following a night out on January 10.

Police said they currently had no evidence of foul play in the man’s death.

Only on Tuesday, a Colombian man missing since mid-February was found dead in another arm of the Spree. The captain of dredging boat plying the Landwehr canal discovered his body in the Kreuzberg district.

The authorities expect an autopsy will determine the cause of the Colombian’s death in the coming days.

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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