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CRIME

Drinks wagon fight led to fatal Rostock beating

Police said on Friday that the man who was beaten to death in Rostock on Thursday was killed in a senseless argument over whose drinks wagon was better-looking.

Published: 3 June 2011 15:19 CEST
Drinks wagon fight led to fatal Rostock beating
Photo: DPA

The 45-year-old man had been part of a group which had become embroiled in a fight with another group during Thursday’s holiday known as Herren Tag, or Men’s Day. The day off is often used as an excuse for groups of male friends to stagger around drinking as much as they can, towing their booze behind them in a little wagon.

One of the two groups which confronted each other in Rostock was carrying drinks in a supermarket trolley while the other had a handcart. The men had become involved in an argument and then a fist fight about which was better, said Klaus Müller, state prosecutor in Rostock, at a press conference on Friday.

The fighting was actually over when one of the drunken men delivered another hit to the 45-year-old, causing him to hit his head against a train, said Müller.

“The fight is clear to see on the video,” he said, referring to the security video recovered from the Warnemünde local train station’s cameras.

Three men aged 23, 24 and 29 fled the scene and hid in a shop nearby before being arrested just a few hours later. They were so drunk at the time that they could only be questioned on Friday once they had sobered up.

Two more men from that group are being sought by officers investigating the man’s death.

The dead man, who has not yet been identified, was initially resuscitated and was thought to be out of danger.

But during the trip to hospital the man’s condition suddenly and dramatically worsened so much that he died by the time he got there.

The German police union (DPolG) called for a more consistent approach to violent, often drunk criminals. Judges pull back from imposing the harshest sentences on those who can say they were very drunk when attacking someone, said the union’s deputy chairman Joachim Lenders.

“A changed social awareness is necessary,” DPolG chairman Rainer Wendt said on television station n-tv. “Whoever, through such violent actions risks the life of another, or ignores the danger of that risk, must realise that he must spend a number of years behind bars for it – even drunken people understand this.”

DPA/DAPD/hc

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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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