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CRIME

Supermarket worker finds loads of cocaine in banana crates

A supermarket worker in southern Germany was stunned to discover 28 kilogrammes (62 pounds) of cocaine while unpacking crates of bananas, police reported on Friday.

Published: 20 March 2009 17:07 CET
Supermarket worker finds loads of cocaine in banana crates
Photo: DPA

The 26-year-old woman in the Bavarian town of Illertissen alerted police immediately after making the find on Wednesday. Officers confiscated the two bins, packed full of the drug in yellow bags just below a thin layer of fruit.

The boxes had been part of a three-pallet fruit delivery that was distributed between several different supermarket chains in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. The shipment originated in Colombia and went through Antwerp, Belgium.

“Some dealers must have picked up the wrong boxes,” Bavarian police spokesperson Ludwig Waldinger told news agency AFP, adding that he’d love to get a look at their faces when the drug dealers tried to get their fix from the fruit snack.

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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