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CRIME

Police put a spoke in bike thieves’ wheels

Police in Hamburg arrested three men in the act of unloading dozens of high-tech bikes worth €300,000 from a shipping container.

Published: 6 January 2015 10:20 CET
Police put a spoke in bike thieves' wheels
Photo: DPA

Residents of one quiet street called police after they noticed a 53-year-old man driving through the area several times on his scooter with a pile of cardboard boxes in a trailer, the Hamburger Abendblatt reported.

After the police checked the boxes and found that they contained the top-of-the-range carbon-fibre bikes – worth around €4,000 each – the man claimed that he had “found” them in a skip with construction waste.

In fact, the bikes had been stolen from a container the man broke into with two accomplices at a rail yard three kilometres away.

When the police arrived, they found 49 more boxes had been removed from the container ready to be hauled away.

And eight more of the bikes were in a car belonging to one of the other thieves, a 24-year-old man.

The 53-year-old man is now accused of having broken into four more containers at the rail yard, as well as defrauding the social benefits system.

He may also be charged with handling dangerous materials after police found that his home contained 34 propane gas canisters, some of which were amateurishly connected to his oven and heating systems, and 160 litres of fuel.

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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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