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CRIME

Poker bandit turns himself in to police

Eleven days after armed robbers snatched €242,000 from a poker game in a daring heist at Berlin’s Grand Hyatt Hotel, one of the culprits has turned himself into police.

Poker bandit turns himself in to police
Photo: DPA

The authorities confirmed on Wednesday that the 21-year-old man turned up at a police station with his attorney earlier this week. He then admitted he was one of the four masked men who crashed the high-stakes poker game with handguns and machetes and made off with part of the prize pot.

The man has been held in custody since, but has reportedly so far refused to reveal the whereabouts of the stolen money.

According to the Berliner Morgenpost daily, he had given the address where at least some of his accomplices were staying. Armed police stormed the property Tuesday but found it empty.

However, it seems unlikely they will be at large much longer.

“We know exactly who we’re looking for. Sooner or later we’ll have the lot of them in our net,” one investigator told Bild.

The men had burst into the hotel at Potsdamer Platz at 2:15 pm on March 6, overrunning security guards and causing panic among the roughly 400 contestants in the European Poker Tour Tournament.

A security guard managed to disarm one of the men, grab a bag full of money and hold the man in a headlock, but he was freed by his accomplices. It was this man, widely seen in pictures over the past 11 days, that was arrested Tuesday, Bild reported.

The men then fled without their masks. They were filmed leaving and also left behind fingerprints and DNA evidence at the scene.

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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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