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Seventh suspect arrested over killing of fireman in centre of Augsburg

A seventh and final suspect was also arrested after a deadly attack on a passer-by in Augsburg on Friday evening.

Published: 9 December 2019 11:18 CET
Seventh suspect arrested over killing of fireman in centre of Augsburg
A memorial of flowers and candles was laid for the victim on Sunday. Photo: DPA

A spokesman for the Augsburg police headquarters said on Monday that all of the suspects have now been caught. 

A 49-year-old professional firefighter had been killed on Friday evening in an argument with a group of young men at Königsplatz in the centre of Augsburg in Bavaria. 

The man had been at the city’s Christmas market with his wife and a couple of friends, before dining in a nearby restaurant. 

There the two couples met a group of seven young men with whom they got into an argument. One of the men hit the victim in the head, causing him to fall to the ground.

His 50-year-old companion was also beaten by the group and injured in the face. The two women were not attacked and remained unharmed. 

Police at the scene of the crime on late Friday evening. Photo: DPA

The perpetrators then fled. Emergency doctors tried to resuscitate the man on site, but the 49-year-old died in the ambulance. 

Investigators arrested the first two 17-year-old suspects on Sunday. 

The video surveillance, which the police installed at Augsburg's Königsplatz in December 2018, helped with the search.

One 17-year-old suspect is a German who also has Turkish and Lebanese citizenship. The other 17-year-old is a native of Augsburg with Italian citizenship. 

Investigators will announce further details of the case at a press conference on Monday afternoon, they said. 

Over 100 firemen held a moment of silence for their colleague at the scene of the crime on Sunday, and also laid flowers and lit candles.

Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder also gave his condolences: “We are all shaken. All our sympathies go to the fireman's family.” 

Surveillance ‘made the work of police much easier’

Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) stressed the importance of video surveillance during arrests after the fatal attack. 

“The images made the work of the police much easier”, the CSU politician told the Augsburger Allgemeine.  

The video surveillance at Königsplatz, the central point for public transport in the city, was not put in place until December 2018 as part of a state programme, the newspaper reported. 

The Augsburg surveillance cameras which had been installed a year earlier in December 2018. Photo: DPA

Since then, the police have been monitoring the area with 15 cameras.

“We have always pushed this, and such cases show that the demand has proven to be right,” Herrmann added.

It difficult for eyewitnesses to describe the perpetrators of a crime precisely, which is why video recordings are the most important for the investigation, he said. 

However, Hermann said that video surveillance should be restricted. He said: “We don't want total surveillance, it only exists in authoritarian states.”

Instead, he said, the focus should be on trying to prevent “excessive violence” in public spaces in the first place. 

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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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