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CRIME

Police search garden allotment in Hanover in ‘Maddie’ case

Police were on Tuesday searching an allotment plot in the northern German city of Hanover in connection with the disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann, deploying an excavator and sniffer dogs to the scene.

Published: 28 July 2020 12:02 CEST
Updated: 28 July 2020 16:47 CEST
Police search garden allotment in Hanover in 'Maddie' case
The parents of Madeleine McCann hold up a photo of their daughter in London in 2012. Photo: DPA

“I can confirm that the search is being carried out in connection with our investigations into the Maddie McCann case,” Brunswick prosecutor Julia Meyer told AFP, when asked about the move first reported by local newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung.

Police began searching the site in the early hours of Tuesday morning, clearing trees and using an excavator to dig up the area.

Several police vehicles were parked along the side, while officers with spades were shovelling in the cordonned-off zone. Police also used a forklift to transport large stones out of the area.

Meyer gave no details of how the plot was connected to the case or what they were hoping to find.

Police raised hopes in June that the mystery over the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old “Maddie” could finally be solved when they revealed they are investigating 43-year-old German Christian B.

READ ALSO: German 'Maddie' suspect refuses to speak about case

Police revealed in June that they were investigating a 43-year-old German man over the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old “Maddie”, saying they believe he killed her.

Madeleine went missing from her family's holiday apartment in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday, as her parents dined with friends at a nearby tapas bar.

Despite a huge international manhunt, no trace of her has been found, nor has anyone been charged over her disappearance.

The suspect, who was not named by police but identified by German media as Christian B., has a history of previous sex offences including child sex offences and rape. He is currently serving a sentence for drug trafficking in Kiel.

He has applied to be released early on probation after having completed two-thirds of the sentence, with a decision still pending.

READ ALSO: 'Concrete evidence' that Madeleine McCann is dead, say German prosecutors

A court in Brunswick had separately sentenced Christian B. to seven years in prison last December for an assault against a 72-year-old American tourist in 2005 — in the same seaside village of Praia da Luz where Maddie went missing.

But that sentence has not yet been finalised pending an appeal by the defendant's lawyers over extradition technicalities.

'Concrete evidence'

According to police, the suspect lived in the Algarve region of Portugal between 1995 and 2007.

He made a living doing odd jobs in the area where Madeleine was taken, and also burgled hotel rooms and holiday flats.

German prosecutors said in June they had “concrete evidence” that Madeleine is dead, despite British police continuing to treat her disappearance as a missing persons case.

However, despite repeated appeals for information, prosecutors have no forensic evidence and have so far not filed any formal charges.

In a recent TV appeal, investigators said they were looking for the owner of a Portuguese mobile phone number that Christian B. had called in May 2007.

Following the stunning revelation from German police that Christian B. could be linked to the missing British girl, investigators elsewhere in Europe were once again looking at cold cases of missing children or teens.

Belgium reopened an investigation into the 1996 murder of a German teenager Carola Titze, 16, who was found dead and mutilated in July 1996 in the resort town of De Haan on the Belgian coast.

In the Netherlands, investigators are taking a closer look at the unexplained disappearance in 1995 of Jair Soares, a seven-year-old Portuguese child.

While living in Hanover, Christian B. received fines for forgery in 2010 and for theft in 2013, according to a report by German news agency DPA.

He split his time between Germany and Portugal from 2013 to 2015, the report said, citing prosecutors in Hanover.

At the end of 2012, he reportedly opened a small shop in Brunswick with his then girlfriend.

After they split up, he continued to run the shop alone until he gave it up 18 months later, along with the adjacent apartment.

Investigators have said Christian B. would only be questioned in connection with the Madeleine McCann case after the investigation is concluded, so that they could present him with the findings of the probe.

By Marion Payet and Femke Colborne

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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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