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CRIME

Rapper fined for threatening to beat disabled woman with her crutches

Berlin rapper Sido reached a €14,000 settlement in a district court on Monday after being accused of defamation, intimidation, and attempted battery due to an August 2007 incident during which he threatened to beat a disabled elderly woman with her crutches.

Rapper fined for threatening to beat disabled woman with her crutches
Sido pictured in 2005. Photo: DPA

The 28-year-old, whose stage name Sido is an abbreviation of super-intelligentes Drogenopfer, or “super intelligent drug victim,” allegedly had a long-running disagreement with a woman over a parking place at the Friedrichshain district location. The woman’s boyfriend, a customer at a cafe in front of the parking spot, became involved.

“There was an argument,” Sido told the court. “But here it has been significantly exaggerated.”

During the altercation, the rapper, whose given name is Paul Würdig, allegedly threatened to stab the man and told his disabled mother, who was also at the scene, that he would beat her with her crutches.

During Monday’s court proceedings, Sido admitted to the “sentence with the crutches,” adding: “That sounds a lot like me.”

He then apparently threw stones in her direction, though she was not hit.

Sido explained to the court that he threw a “handful of pebbles” into the cafe out of “frustration,” but that this had nothing to do with the elderly woman.

The court said that allegations of battery could not be proved based on witness reports, and agreed to allow Sido to pay the 69-year-old woman €2,000, and another €12,000 to two charitable organisations.

Sido has released three solo albums since 2004 and is known for wearing a silver skull mask similar to that of American rapper Ghostface Killah.

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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.

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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