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Germany’s ‘killer nurse’ tells families of over 100 victims ‘sorry’

A German former hospital nurse who has admitted to killing more than 100 patients in his care apologised Thursday to victims' grieving relatives.

Published: 22 November 2018 13:33 CET

Germany's 'killer nurse' tells families of over 100 victims 'sorry'

Niels Högel sits next to his lawyer Kirsten Hüfken in the Oldenburg courtroom on the second day of the trial. Photo: DPA

“If I knew a way that would help you, then I would take it, believe me,” Niels Högel, 41, said at his trial, according to national news agency DPA.

“I am fully convinced now that I owe every relative an explanation,” said the bearded, heavyset defendant

“I am honestly sorry.”

Högel, Germany's worst post-war serial killer, has already spent nearly a decade in prison on a life term for six other patient deaths but has now admitted to 100 more killings.

SEE ALSO: German ex-nurse admits at trial to killing 100 patients

He has confessed to giving patients drug overdoses because he enjoyed the thrill of trying to reanimate them at the last moment.

Prosecutors say he was motivated by vanity, to show off his skills at saving human lives, and by simple “boredom”.

At the start of the trial last month in the northern city of Oldenburg, presiding judge Sebastian Buehrmann said the main aim was to establish the full scope of the murder spree that was allowed to go unchecked for years at two German hospitals.

SEE ALSO: What you need to know about the German killer nurse case

Prosecutors say at least 36 patients were killed at a hospital in Oldenburg where he worked, and about 64 more at a clinic in nearby Delmenhorst, between 2000 and 2005.

More than 130 bodies of patients who died on Högel's watch have been exhumed, in a case investigators have called “unprecedented in Germany to our knowledge”.

Investigators say the final toll could top 200 but fear they might never know because the bodies of many possible victims were cremated.

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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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