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CRIME

Teens set fire to sleeping drunk

Two 14-year-olds have admitted to setting fire to an intoxicated 60-year-old man after robbing him in Eberswalde, police said.

Published: 17 July 2009 11:14 CEST
Teens set fire to sleeping drunk
Photo: DPA

The state prosecutor’s office in the city of Frankfurt an der Oder confirmed their confession on Thursday evening.

Last Friday the two boys allegedly came across the man while he was sleeping in an apartment building hallway when they decided to steal his bank card and cigarettes. The intoxicated man could not provide them with his PIN because he himself did not know the number.

“He always got money from the bank counter,” a spokesperson for the state prosecutor said.

The boys became agitated and set the man’s clothing and hair on fire. The victim was treated for burns in a local hospital.

When a resident of the apartment entered the hallway the boys ran off.

The spokesperson said one of the students played a smaller role in the violence.

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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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