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CRIME

Police arrest man after fast-food stand-off

UPDATE: A man threatened to set fire to a fast-food outlet in southern Germany on Thursday night with 12 people inside. The 14-hour stand-off ended on Friday morning when armed police stormed the restaurant.

Published: 25 October 2013 09:21 CEST
Police arrest man after fast-food stand-off
Photo: DPA

After forces entered the building in an industrial area of Freiburg, police said those with the 36-year-old man were family and friends trying to calm him down and not hostages.

The Turkish man claimed to be armed and to be carrying a flammable liquid.

Police said the hostage-taker was known to them.

Mediators spoke with the man overnight on the telephone but could not get any sense out of him.

The man has previously committed arms and drugs offences, police said.

On Thursday he was supposed to be in court over drug offences but never appeared. Instead he phoned the police and said he was prepared to do anything.

He was agitated apparently because he feared “consequences” of not showing up to court.

READ MORE: Father ‘shut baby girl in fridge for crying’

AFP/DPA/The Local/tsb

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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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