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Hamburg police hunt cross-dressing armed bank robber

Police in Hamburg are asking for information about an armed bank robber who disguised himself as an old woman on Friday, stole several thousand euros and escaped a huge operation to catch him.

Published: 9 May 2009 12:23 CEST
Hamburg police hunt cross-dressing armed bank robber
Is he here somewhere? Photo: DPA

The man, thought to be about 45 years old, entered the Haspa bank on the Spitalerstrasse in the centre of the city wearing a headscarf, glasses and a long coat, according to police information.

He pulled a pistol on the bank teller and then in classic form, handed over a note which read, ‘This is a robbery’, the Hamburger Morgenpost reported.

After being given several thousand euros in cash, the man stormed out of the bank and ran up the street along the famous Jungfernsteig and into town.

Armed police soon swarmed through the city centre, at one point searching a brothel in their hunt for the man.

At least five members of the public were searched as they walked through town, and one man in a car was stopped and checked.

Dozens of police cars and the police helicopter were called out, while metro trains were stopped and searched, but to no avail.

Police are now appealing for any information about the man who they say is around 170cm tall and about 45 years old. He was wearing a dark, long coat, a light-coloured headscarf and a pair of glasses.

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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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