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CRIME

Rent-jumping family caught by police

An eight-person family that avoided paying rent for years by moving house every two to three weeks has finally been caught in the northern German town of Schneverdingen.

Published: 9 February 2012 08:20 CET
Updated: 9 February 2012 10:07 CET
Rent-jumping family caught by police
Photo: DPA

The father of the family, which also included two women and five children, is currently in custody, police said on Wednesday.

The family reportedly moved house seven times in a short period in the district of Vulkaneifel in the small western town of Daun.

Several property owners have pressed charges against the family for fraud, though police are working on the assumption that many more have been defrauded since 2009.

The family, which changed its name with each move, also lived in Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony-Anhalt, Hesse, Bavaria, and North Rhine-Westphalia.

Heinz-Peter Thiel, Daun police director, said the father of the family had called himself “Dr. Abdul” on several occasions and was able to put down deposits with “thick wads of cash.” But then the entire family would suddenly disappear without cancelling its rental agreements.

State prosecutors have begun an investigation.

DAPD/The Local/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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