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CRIME

Police hunt for missing man in concrete floor

German police began scanning the floor of a Hells Angels warehouse for a missing man on Friday, fearing his body was cemented into it by gang members. Large-scale raids on the bikers led officers to the depot.

Published: 25 May 2012 15:38 CEST
Police hunt for missing man in concrete floor
Photo: DPA

Over 1,200 police officers were deployed across northern Germany to raid known Hells Angels’ haunts on Thursday – including pubs, brothels and houses.

Police were led to a warehouse in the Altenholz area outside the city of Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, where they suspect the body of a missing man, 47-year-old Tekin Bicer, has been cemented into the floor by the gang.

State prosecutors said on Friday that investigators emptied the building and are currently scanning it with special equipment. But they did not say whether Bicer, who had been missing since April 2010, had previously been linked to the biker gang.

Kiel was a focal point for the raids, with police storming 87 addresses and arresting five leading Hells Angels members. They also confiscated several knives, guns and machetes, along with computers and mobile phones.

Prosecutors are now investigating 69 members of the gang on a total of nearly 200 potential counts of sex trafficking, assault, corruption and illegally selling guns – possibly to far-right extremist party the National Democratic Party (NPD).

Thursday’s raids were the largest-ever against the Hells Angels of northern Germany.

The biker gang is often linked to criminal activity in Germany and violent clashes with other gangs.

DPA/DAPD/The Local/jcw

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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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