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CRIME

Dead infant found in Berlin clothing donation container

A German Red Cross worker found a dead baby in a Berlin clothing donation container on Monday morning, daily Berliner Zeitung reported.

Published: 9 March 2009 12:01 CET
Dead infant found in Berlin clothing donation container
Photo: DPA

Police told the paper that a Red Cross (DRK) employer found the baby while collecting donations from a Wilmersdorf district container at 7 am. Officers closed the scene for investigation.

“I discovered the corpse between the other items,” the 37-year-old told the paper. “It was clean, not covered in blood, which is why in that moment I thought it was a doll at first.”

The DRK worker, identified as René G., collects clothing donations from the large metal containers throughout Berlin each day.

“I felt faint and sick,” G. said. “The shock is still deep.”

Police are questioning potential witnesses in the area – which is in plain view of a restaurant and parking lot – while they await an autopsy.

Over the weekend, two other dead infants were discovered in a Stuttgart trash container and a wooded area near Engen-Anselfingen in the state of Baden-Württemberg, the paper reported.

In the last few years Germany has been plagued with a spate of gruesome infanticide cases that have shocked the country. One woman who killed nine of her babies was sentenced to 15 years in prison in April 2008.

In May 2008, a 44-year-old woman was arrested when her family found three dead babies in her freezer near Bonn.

Meanwhile in January of 2009, a German soldier was jailed for leaving her newborn daughter to die after giving birth at army barracks toilet while allegedly unaware she was pregnant.

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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