NOS News•today, 1:43 PM
A 17-year-old boy has turned himself in to the police for the attack on German MEP Matthias Ecke. The Social Democrat was seriously injured yesterday in an attack by unknown people and had to undergo surgery.
Ecke, 41, was attacked by four strangers while he was pasting election posters in Striesen, a densely populated district in Dresden. A few minutes earlier, the group had also attacked a 28-year-old Greens campaign worker, according to police. He was also pasting posters and was injured when he was punched and kicked by the perpetrators.
Because the personal descriptions of witnesses match and the two incidents took place in the same area and shortly after each other, the authorities assume that the perpetrators are the same.
All perpetrators are estimated by the police to be between 17 and 20 years old. According to witnesses, they were wearing dark clothing, a police spokesperson said.
The 17-year-old boy has admitted that he knocked Ecke down, police report. It is still unclear who the other perpetrators are. A motive is also not yet known.
‘Attack on democracy’
SPD leader Klingbeil has reacted with shock to the attack on his party colleague. In an interview with Tagesschau he calls for more protection for politicians.
Yesterday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) called for “joint action against the right”. He called the attack on Ecke sad. “Democracy is threatened by this,” Scholz said. Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) spoke of an “attack on democracy”.
It was the second time in a few days that a politician was attacked in Germany. Last Thursday, two members of the Greens were attacked in Essen, a city in the Ruhr region.
‘They consider us outlaws’
According to the SPD, several campaign teams have recently faced intimidation and insults. The Social Democrats in the state of Saxony, where Dresden is located, partly blame the attacks on the “seeds” that they believe the right-wing populist AfD and right-wing extremists have sown.
“Their supporters are now completely out of control and apparently regard us as outlaws,” the party leadership in the state said. However, it is not known whether this is really an attack from the extreme right.
The number of threats and attacks on German politicians has been increasing for years. There has been a doubling since 2019, according to figures released by the government in January. Last year there were 1,200 attacks, of which 478 were on members of the right-wing populist Alternative for Deutschland and 420 on SPD politicians.
