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CRIME

Germany busts suspected child-sex abuse ring

Eleven people have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of sexually abusing children and filming their actions, police said on Saturday.

Published: 7 June 2020 11:07 CEST
Germany busts suspected child-sex abuse ring
The house in Münster where the data was seized. Photo: DPA

Hard disks containing up to 500 terabytes of data, including videos and photos, were seized from the cellar of a 27-year-old man from the western city of Muenster.

Investigators identified at least three potential victims aged five, 10 and 12 years old. Some of the suspects — who hail from regions across Germany — are related to the children.

Muenster police said in a press conference that the recovered footage showed shocking abuse over “several hours” of the two younger boys by four men.

READ: Two men jailed for over a decade in Germany's 'largest child abuse scandal' 

“You can't imagine it,” said lead investigator Joachim Poll.

“These men, if you can call them that, acted maliciously by encrypting all their discussions on their cell phones.”

Police said the abuse took place at a summer house in Muenster belonging to the mother of the 27-year-old suspect.

Germany is still in shock over an earlier scandal in Luegde, 125 kilometres (80 miles) from Muenster, where several men abused children several hundred times at a campsite over a period of several years.

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ANTI-SEMITISM

Germany sees sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts

Anti-Semitic acts rose sharply in Germany last year, especially after war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in October, according to new figures released on Tuesday.

Published: 25 June 2024 17:03 CEST
Germany sees sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts

The Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism (RIAS) documented 4,782 anti-Semitic “incidents” in 2023 – an increase of more than 80 per cent on the previous year.

More than half of the incidents – which included threats, physical attacks and vandalism – were registered after Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7th attack on Israel, RIAS said.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency last week also published figures showing a new record in anti-Semitic crimes in 2023.

A total of 5,164 crimes were recorded during the year, the agency said, compared with 2,641 in 2022.

Anti-Semitic crimes with a “religious-ideological motivation” jumped to 492 from just 33 the previous year, with the vast majority committed after October 7.

Felix Klein, the government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism, said the RIAS figures were “absolutely catastrophic”.

The Hamas attack had acted as an “accelerant” for anti-Semitism in Germany, he told a press conference in Berlin.

“Jewish life in Germany is under greater threat than it has ever been since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded,” he said.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,600 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza’s health ministry said.

Islamophobic incidents also increased dramatically in Germany last year, according to a separate report published on Monday.

The CLAIM alliance against Islamophobia said it had registered 1,926 attacks on Muslims in 2023, compared with just under 900 in 2023.

These included verbal abuse, discrimination, physical violence and damage to property.

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