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CRIME

Charges filed in Berlin metro beating case

Two weeks after a brutal attack at a Berlin metro station, the main 18-year-old suspect has been officially charged with severely assaulting the victim.

Published: 5 May 2011 15:39 CEST
Charges filed in Berlin metro beating case
Photo: DPA

The young man, previously identified as Torben P., is accused of attacking the 29-year-old man at Friedrichstraße U-Bahn station. In a surveillance video, Torben P. appears to stomp on the man’s head repeatedly. The victim was knocked unconscious and is currently recovering.

The assailant and another suspect subsequently turned themselves into police but Torben P. was immediately released on bail by a judge, prompting outrage throughout Germany.

Gisela von der Aue, Berlin’s justice minister, told RBB Inforadio that prosecutors have responded quickly to the case. Charges of versuchter Totschlag, which is similar to causing grievous bodily harm are being pursued.

Martin Stelzer, a spokesman for the city’s prosecutors office, confirmed the charges, but said he couldn’t elaborate until they have officially been served on the suspect. It is not clear whether charges have also been filed against the second suspect.

But von der Aue defended the decision to release Torben P. from jail, saying the rule of law had been closely followed.

The Local/DAPD/DPA/mdm

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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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