Berlin:
A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders labeled a threat to democracy.
The teenager reported himself to police in the eastern city of Dresden early on Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.
Matthias Ecke, 41, a European Parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD), was attacked by four assailants on Friday evening as he put up EU election posters in Dresden, according to police.
Ecke was “seriously injured” and required surgery after the attack, his party said.
Scholz condemned the attack on Saturday as a threat to democracy.
“We should never accept such acts of violence,” he said.
Ecke, head of the SPD's European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.
Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens was “beaten” and “kicked” on the same street in Dresden earlier in the evening.
Last week, two Greens deputies were assaulted while campaigning in Essen in western Germany, and another was surrounded by dozens of protesters in her car in the east of the country.
According to preliminary police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the year before, but down from the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when the parliamentary elections took place.
A group of activists against the far right have called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.
According to Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser plans to convene a special conference with Germany's regional interior ministers next week to tackle violence against politicians.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)