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CRIME

Police scramble after toy gun spotted at Merkel rally

Three people were arrested after a woman holding what appears to have been a cap gun in an apartment window sparked a police operation during a North Rhine-Westphalia campaign speech by Angela Merkel on Wednesday night.

Published: 6 May 2010 08:02 CEST
Police scramble after toy gun spotted at Merkel rally
Photo: DPA

Merkel was addressing a crowd of about 3,000 CDU supporters on the Johannes Rau Platz in the town of Wuppertal when federal police officers noticed two women in a nearby window, one of whom was holding a “suspect object,” police said in statement.

They surrounded the apartment and nabbed the five people – two men and three women – as they tried to leave, police chief Michael Bartsch told daily Bild.

The police officers searched the apartment and found two toy “cap” guns. They arrested two men and a woman. The men were later released but the woman was held because she had an outstanding arrest warrant for another matter.

Neither Merkel nor North Rhine-Westphalian state premier Jürgen Rüttgers, on whose behalf the chancellor was campaigning, were aware of the incident as it was unfolding, police said.

“Everything went calmly and came to a peaceful conclusion,” a police spokesman said.

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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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