Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

SEX

Raids in three states crack sex-trafficking ring

Over 150 police officers in western Germany took part in raids across three states on Tuesday, cracking what they believe to have been a human trafficking ring. They freed at least two teenage girls thought to be living in “enslavement.”

Published: 25 October 2012 07:16 CEST
Raids in three states crack sex-trafficking ring
Photo: DPA

The raids happened simultaneously at 14 different buildings. Police in France and Belgium also stormed several houses in the hope of busting the Kosovan sex slave ring, Der Spiegel magazine said on Wednesday.

Officers managed to free a 14-year-old girl in Baden-Württemberg and put her in the care of a victim support group.

In Germany alone, authorities have their eye on 22 people, four of whom are women. During the raids they arrested four main suspects, aged between 18 and 57, who face potential charges of human trafficking, rape, bodily harm, and false imprisonment.

The family-run gang may have smuggled 50 girls from Kosovo into the country, as well as into Belgium, Scandinavia and France, using fake passports from other members of the gang, police said in a statement.

Officers targeted houses in Hesse, Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg. They have been gathering information on the ring since 2011, when they found a 15-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted.

The Local/jcw

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS