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CRIME

Junkie holds up cash machine locations with needle

Police in the Hessian city of Darmstadt are searching for a man who held up two cash machine customers with a hypodermic needle and demanded money for drugs on Sunday.

Published: 23 November 2009 08:04 CET
Junkie holds up cash machine locations with needle
Photo: DPA

“I’m a junkie, need €50,” the man allegedly told one victim at a Sparkasse branch on Grundstrasse around 4 pm while threatening to make a jab with a needle.

The attack followed similar demands made by the man at a separate bank location on Rheinstrasse around 2 pm.

“In both cases the victims handed him the money and the suspect fled without harming them,” a police statement said.

Despite an immediate search that included the use of a helicopter, police have not been able to locate the man. He was described as a corpulent, dark-haired man of average height wearing jeans and a military-style cap.

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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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