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CRIME

Pipe bombs hidden in kids’ playground

A five-year-old boy in Germany found two home-made pipe bombs at a playground but escaped unscathed, police said after arresting three men who admitted to planting the explosives.

Published: 21 June 2011 06:21 CEST
Pipe bombs hidden in kids' playground
Photo: DPA

The state police office in Bavaria, southern Germany, said in a statement that the boy and his father had discovered the pipes in a sandpit and under a bush at the playground in the town of Fürstenfeldbruck.

The father reported the find to the police, noting that he had heard a loud bang at the site the night before and saw three young men climbing into a car and driving away. He wrote down their number plate.

Explosives experts determined the pipes contained live bombs.

Using the number plate details, police tracked down the three men, aged 19 to 21, the statement said.

“All three confessed to having built the bombs themselves using power from leftover New Year’s Eve firecrackers,” it said.

“They were charged with violating explosives laws.”

AFP/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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