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CRIME

Police arrest one in poker heist investigation

Police in Berlin hunting for a gang who robbed a high-stakes poker tournament in front of rolling cameras have made an arrest and raided several addresses in the capital.

Published: 13 March 2010 11:06 CET
Police arrest one in poker heist investigation
Photo: DPA

A team of armed officers arrested a suspect thought to have taken part in the robbery, police confirmed on Saturday morning, following a report in the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper.

Detectives investigating the heist on the tournament at the Berlin Grand Hyatt Hotel on Potsdamer Platz arrested the man on Friday evening after following clues about the getaway car.

Four machete-wielding men stormed the European Poker Tour while guards were on their break, and just as hundreds of thousands of euros were being prepared for transfer to the main safe.

They escaped with around €242,000 in cash, having caused chaos amid the crowded hotel, where players including celebrities such as Boris Becker had been taking part in the poker match.

Sources told the paper the man they arrested was thought to have taken part in another high-profile robbery in 2004. That January four armed masked men stormed the casino at the top of the Park Inn on Alexanderplatz in central Berlin. They were later arrested and convicted, receiving jail terms of between two and four years.

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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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