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Hamburg pastor probed for child porn

Prosecutors in Hamburg are investigating a Protestant pastor for suspicion of possessing child pornography and possibly abusing children, daily Die Welt reported on Tuesday.

Published: 8 December 2009 10:58 CET
Hamburg pastor probed for child porn
An archive picture totally unrelated to the case. Photo: DPA

The authorities stumbled upon the 47-year-old man from Alt-Rahlstedt while breaking up a child porn ring and they have already searched his apartment. After confiscating his computer they found a considerable amount of questionable material, according to the spokesman of the city’s state prosecutor Wilhelm Möllers.

He is also thought to have sent pictures of children at a church choir practice to another man with contacts to the pedophilia scene.

Perhaps even more worrying, the paper reported that the pastor is also being investigated for sexually abusing children. The local church has recently informed 200 parents of the case and children have already been questioned.

“The pastor has been suspended from his duties because he is suspected of committing a crime,” Thomas Kärst, a spokesman for the Northern Elbe Protestant-Lutheran Church, told Die Welt.

The pastor, who spent more than 10 years in Rahlstedt, reportedly has not had contact with his congregation for several months after church officials said he was suffering from “burnout syndrome.”

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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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