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CRIME

Further accusations fall on Mirco murderer

Olaf H., the man who confessed to the murder of 10-year-old Mirco, is now being investigated in connection with the unresolved case of an 11-year-old girl found dead 15 years ago.

Published: 6 February 2011 11:51 CET
Further accusations fall on Mirco murderer
Photo: DPA

The house and garden of the 45-year-old father of three were searched with sniffer dogs on Friday. Police investigator Ingo Thiel told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, “We’re currently investigating whether Olaf H. committed further crimes.”

Thiel referred to the unresolved case of Claudia R., whose body was discovered in 1996 on a country path near the village of Grevenbroich in North Rhine-Westphalia. The homicide department of the Bonn police have been investigating the case.

Police launched one of their largest search actions in German history after Mirco went missing on September 3, employing 1,000 officers, a Tornado jet and a drone. But they failed to find his body because it was outside the search perimeter. Had they been in the right area, the Tornado jet’s heat sensors would have certainly found the body, Thiel said.

Olaf H. faces charges of murder, kidnapping and sexual assault on a child. Olaf lived with two of his children and his third wife in the village of Schwalmtal.

The murderer’s apparent motive for the murder has changed since his arrest. Olaf H. originally said he killed Mirco out of frustration following an argument with his boss, but his lawyer Gerd Meister has now said that Olaf H. told him he had been abused as a child.

DAPD/bk

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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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