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CRIME

State: school shooting killer mother must pay

German lawyers have said they will demand millions of euros in damages from the mother of a boy who killed himself and 14 people and injured a further 14 in a school shooting in 2009, for what they say was a breach of duty on her part.

Published: 26 May 2013 16:39 CEST
State: school shooting killer mother must pay

The mother of Tim Kretschmer, the then 17-year-old boy who opened fire at his school in Winnenden in Baden-Württemberg in March 2009, will be asked to pay €9.3 million in damages for her role in the tragedy, the Stuttgarter Zeitung said over the weekend.

Four years after the incident, authorities are now claiming that the killer’s mother shared responsibility for the murders along with his father, who was sentenced in 2011 to 15 counts of manslaughter through culpable negligence after he was found to have left a weapon in an unlocked cupboard in the couple’s bedroom.

The gun was her shared responsibility, say claimants, and she committed a breach of duty because she knew her son had psychological problems at the time of the shooting.

The claim comes from local authorities in Winnenden, which together with the regional state accident insurance company paid out for restoring and reopening the Albertville-Realschule school following the incident, as well as for renting a replacement building in the interim and seeing to psychological treatment for survivors.

The mother’s lawyer Erik Silcher told the paper there is no proof of breach of duty, in that she could not have been expected to have kept an eye on her then 17-year-old boy day and night. His client will fight the compensation demands, added Silcher.

Meanwhile, wrote the paper, the killer’s parents, who now live under police protection programme, are hoping to sue the clinic in Weinsberg which had been treating their son Tim at the time of the shooting for €8.8 million – money they say will go straight to the relatives of the dead and injured.

DPA/The Local/jlb

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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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