The vice mayor of Berlin, the social democrat Franziska Giffey, was attacked this Tuesday by a 74-year-old man who left her slightly injured when he hit her on the head, according to reports this Wednesday, at a time when concern about the attacks in Germany increases. to politicians after several incidents of this type.
The police in the German capital reported the arrest of the alleged aggressor, whose motivation is still unknown but who has a record "in the field of political crimes and crime related to hate crimes."
The attacker appeared before the investigating judge this Wednesday. The Prosecutor's Office was considering requesting his admission to a psychiatric center, as there are indications that he could suffer from a mental disorder.
After the attack, Giffey was taken to the hospital to be treated for the pain of the bruise and later left the hospital on her own two feet. She herself explained in The attacker used a bag filled with a hard material and fled taking advantage of the confusion, although he was arrested this Wednesday.
Giffey, who was mayor-governor of Berlin (2021-2023), declared herself “shocked” by the “increasingly frequent” attacks to which people who get involved in politics are exposed. “There is a clear limit. And it is violence against people who represent another point of view. For whatever reasons, in whatever form, these attacks are unjustifiable,” she stated.
Last Friday, the main candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) for the European elections in the federal state of Saxony, Matthias Ecke, was seriously injured when he was attacked while hanging election posters in Dresden. The suspects, who apparently had recently attacked a Green volunteer who was also posting posters, were teenagers linked to the far right. Two other Green militants reported on Tuesday that they had been pushed, threatened and spit upon by two individuals belonging to a group from which the prohibited fascist salute was carried out, also in Dresden.
As a result of the attack against Ecke, on Tuesday the Minister of the Interior, the social democrat Nancy Faeser, met with the heads of the Interior of the länder to address the issue of violence against politicians. Faeser announced an agreement to promote a tightening of the penal code to more harshly punish acts of violence or harassment against figures in public life and to speed up these judicial processes, although to launch this initiative he must first reach a consensus with the Minister of Justice, the liberal Marco Buschmann. Faeser said that in 2023 acts of violence against elected officials increased by 53% compared to 2022 and she spoke of an “escalation of antidemocratic violence.”
