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CRIME

Berlin burglars steal 300 phones in one minute

Raiders stole 300 phones in just one minute on Sunday after driving a stolen car into a shopping centre in the middle of Berlin.

Published: 9 December 2013 16:55 CET
Berlin burglars steal 300 phones in one minute
Photo: DPA

The group of four men smashed the Ford Fiesta through glass doors of the Alexa shopping centre at 5.30am on Sunday, and charged 45 metres through the main concourse, the Tagesspiegel newspaper reported.

The group jumped out of the car, ran up the escalator to the centre's branch of electronics giant Media Markt, where they sprinted 50 metres through the shop to the phone section and grabbed as many handsets as they could.

Abandoning the Fiesta in the popular shopping mall, which was due to open on Sunday mid-morning, the men got into a black Audi, which was waiting near the escalator, and had been driven in after the Fiesta.

Alexa's press team declined to comment after the incident and it remained unclear whether security at the centre would be tightened.

The incident mirrored a raid in the Steglitz area of the city at the end of October. Burglars drove through the front window of a pawnbrokers – also in a stolen Ford Fiesta, before jumping into a waiting dark Audi.

Berlin's State Office for Criminal Investigations has taken over the case and are looking to see whether it could be the same group as other break-ins.

Alexa shopping centre opened at 1pm, by which time there was barely any sign of the break-in. Just one entrance was closed off.

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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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