Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Actor arrested after jewel thief TV role

Police arrested an actor who played a jewel thief in a television reconstruction after a viewer mistakenly identified him as the real criminal.

Published: 22 April 2012 11:09 CEST
Actor arrested after jewel thief TV role
Photo: DPA

Aaron Defant must have played his part too convincingly. The 29-year-old actor was arrested by police in Stuttgart this week after being mistaken for the criminal he had played in an on-screen robbery reconstruction, Saturday’s Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.

An unnamed viewer alerted police on Wednesday when they recognised Defant in Stuttgart city centre – more than five weeks after his appearance on an episode of the long-running ZDF crime-busting programme Aktenzeichen XY… ungelöst.

The March 11 programme had appealed to the public to find the thief behind the unsolved robbery of a jewellery store in Kirn in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

“Suddenly two officers were standing behind me,” Defant told the paper. “They demanded my ID. I asked them why, but they didn’t answer.“

But Defant remained calm and managed to convince the policemen they had got the wrong man. “I told them I’m an actor,” he said.

This is the first time such a mix-up has happened, the show’s presenter Rudi Cerne told Bild.

“Maybe it’s because the actor looked very similar to the real criminal,” said Cerne.

DPA/The Local/jlb

Member comments

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

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”.

SHOW COMMENTS