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CRIME

Police probe whether woman was stabbed to death for converting to Christianity

German police said Wednesday they were examining if there was a religious motive in an Afghan asylum-seeker's fatal stabbing of a compatriot, who had converted from Islam to Christianity.

Published: 3 May 2017 16:30 CEST
Police probe whether woman was stabbed to death for converting to Christianity
Chiemsee. Photo: DPA

The female victim, 38, was stabbed on Saturday in front of a supermarket in southern Bavaria by the 29-year-old migrant, police said, in a case that made national headlines.

The stabbing took place in front of the woman's children. The woman subsequently died from her wounds.

Police said motives of the assault have not been determined, and the man has since been interned in a psychiatric hospital.

But they confirmed that they are looking into a possible religious link after learning that the victim, a mother of two who arrived in Germany in 2011, was a Christian convert.

“It's a possibility that we're exploring,” said a police spokesman, adding that the victim and the alleged attacker knew each other even if they were not close.

The man had arrived in Germany in 2013 and was residing at an asylum-seeker shelter.

Germany took in more than a million refugees since 2015, and some have taken on the Christian faith.

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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