A 17-year-old German man handed himself over to the police early Sunday, claiming to be the perpetrator of the attack on Social Democrat MEP Matthias Ecke, who was seriously injured on Friday night when he was beaten and stomped on by four men while pasting election posters in Dresden. “The young man has no previous record. The investigation into the other suspects, so far unknown, that the witnesses mentioned, continues,” the Saxon police reported yesterday on the X social network.
Ecke, 41, candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) – the formation of Chancellor Olaf Scholz – in the European elections on June 9, is hospitalized with facial fractures and will undergo surgery today.
The attack has aroused indignation and concern in equal parts in Germany, as it presents characteristics of violence for political reasons. Several parties attribute it to the climate triggered by the aggressive verbal virulence of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) formation.
For this reason, federations of associations against the extreme right called demonstrations yesterday afternoon: one in Dresden in the central Pohlandplatz, which was attended by the co-chair of the SPD, Saskia Esken, and another in Berlin in front of the door of Brandenburg.
About three thousand people marched in Dresden and another thousand demonstrated in Berlin, according to estimates by the police in the respective cities. The demonstrators in Dresden carried banners with slogans such as: “Democracy lives here”; “Nazis kill” or “Never again is now”. In Berlin, among other phrases, one of the banners said: “In unity, justice and freedom there is no place for Nazis”.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the attack continues. “On May 5, 2024, at approximately one in the morning, a young man (17 years old, German) presented himself at the Dresden-South police station and declared that he was the perpetrator who had assaulted the politician of the SPD”, the Regional Criminal Investigation Office (LKA) of the federal state of Saxony reported in a statement. According to the Bild newspaper, the young man went to the police station accompanied by his mother. The suspect is not in pre-trial detention because he is a minor, has a permanent address and has surrendered voluntarily. “He admitted the act, but did not go further,” said police spokeswoman Silvaine Reiche.
The Greens volunteer attacked in Dresden also on Friday by four young men, when he was also pasting election posters, suffered minor injuries. “Thank God he was not as badly injured as Mr. Ecke and was able to return home after receiving outpatient treatment from the emergency services,” said Valentin Lippmann, a Green member of the Saxon Parliament. The police suspect that they are the same assailants who attacked Matthias Ecke.
Recently there have been other attacks or cornerings: one or two environmentalist local officials in Essen, in western Germany, who were beaten, and another against the also environmentalist Katrin Göring-Eckardt, vice president of the Bundestag (Lower House of Parliament), whose car was surrounded after an event in the east of the country.
According to the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, the Minister of the Interior, Social Democrat Nancy Faeser, plans to convene a conference with regional Interior officials to address violence against elected officials. According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against political representatives in 2023, compared to 1,806 the previous year. However, the record took place in 2021, when legislative elections were held and there were 2,840 crimes of this kind.
