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CRIME

Seven-year-old found in forest was murdered

A seven-year-old girl from Thuringia, whose body was found Saturday morning, was murdered, police said on Sunday. Police are looking for her red school bag in the search for clues.

Published: 26 June 2011 11:35 CEST
Seven-year-old found in forest was murdered
photo: DPA

The autopsy carried out on the girl enabled investigators to “determine without a doubt that this was a homicide,” police spokesman Eberhard Wagner said.

Police did not release further information about the circumstances of the death due to the ongoing investigation.

Walkers came upon the still-clothed body of the girl in a forest creek near the town of Zella-Mehlis in southern Thuringia. The body’s location was about 1.5 kilometres from where the girl had lived with her mother.

The girl had been missing since Friday evening when she failed to return from school.

On Saturday evening, a vigil was held in the town in which some 700 people took part, police said.

DPA/DAPD/kdj

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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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