SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Hamburg airport hostage-taker gives himself up

An armed father who had taken his four-year-old daughter hostage gave himself up on Sunday without resistance after hours of negotiations at Hamburg airport, German police said.

Hamburg airport hostage-taker gives himself up
Officers of the German Federal Police (Bundespolizei) on October 11, 2023. Photo: JENS SCHLUETER/AFP.

The 35-year-old man had barricaded himself and the child in his car at the foot of a Turkish Airlines plane on Saturday evening, demanding to be allowed on board after a custody dispute with the mother.

He had rammed his car through the security area onto the apron where planes are parked, firing two shots in the air and throwing two burning bottles out of the vehicle, police said.

“The hostage-taking has ended,” local police posted on X, formerly Twitter, Sunday afternoon.

“The man has left his car with his daughter and been taken for questioning by security forces without resistance,” it said, adding the child “seems in good health”.

Police had brought psychologists and teams of negotiators as well as rapid response units to the airport in northern Germany. Authorities said a dispute over custody of the child was believed to be behind the incident, with the wife of the driver placing an emergency call alerting police to the abduction of her child.

Police had described lengthy negotiations which had taken place in Turkish and announced the father was believed to be “in possession of a loaded weapon and perhaps explosives”.

The man, a Turk according to the daily Bild newspaper, had at first demanded to be allowed to fly to Turkey with his daughter.

“That’s no longer the aim of negotiations,” a local police spokesperson had said. “We believe that the child is physically well,” police spokeswoman Sandra Levgruen told regional television channel NDR.

“That’s what we can see and what we gather from telephone conversations with the man responsible for what has happened. We can hear the child in the background.”

“I don’t want to talk about her mental state,” the spokeswoman added. “We are talking, talking and talking again,” with the father, and “trying to find a peaceful solution,” she had added.

On Sunday morning the airport management posted on X saying, “Air traffic remains suspended until further notice.”

On Saturday evening, 17 flights scheduled to land in Hamburg were diverted. Another 286 flights were scheduled for Sunday, carrying some 34,500 passengers.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS