air traffic
After hostage-taking: Union calls for more protection for airports
An armed man drove his car and his four-year-old child onto the airport apron on Saturday evening. photo
© Jonas Walzberg/dpa
The hostage-taking at Hamburg Airport highlighted weak points in the sensitive infrastructure. The Union is now calling for consequences nationwide.
After the bloodless ended Hostage taking at Hamburg airport CDU and CSU in the Bundestag are calling for better protection for German airports.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) must carefully check whether the legal requirements for airport security are still up to date, said Union parliamentary group vice-president Andrea Lindholz (CSU) to the Editorial Network Germany (RND).
When it comes to security standards, Germany “cannot continue to be naïve about the world,” emphasized her party colleague and interior expert from the Union faction, Alexander Throm.
On Saturday, a man with a car broke through the access restrictions to Hamburg Airport and drove onto the airport apron. The background was a custody dispute: According to the public prosecutor’s office, the man wanted to use the action to force his daughter, who had previously been violently kidnapped from his ex-wife’s apartment in Stade (Lower Saxony), to leave the country for Turkey. Only after around 18 hours of negotiations did the hostage taker surrender to the security forces. The airport was closed for more than 20 hours – tens of thousands of passengers were affected.
Climate activists shut down the airport in July
It was not the first time that the airport’s security barriers were breached. It was only in July that climate activists from the Last Generation group shut down the airport for hours after cutting a hole in the fence and making their way onto the airfield. There were similar incidents at other German airports.
“After the disruptive actions by climate activists at the airports in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Hamburg as well as the “Scholz hugger” at Frankfurt Airport, we are now experiencing another serious security incident at an airport a short time later,” said Lindholz. “At stake is the safety of air traffic and therefore the safety of passengers and staff.”
Throm also called for more security, as the situation has worsened significantly over the past two years. “We also have to respond to this in the area of critical infrastructure,” he told the RND. “I expect the federal government and, above all, Federal Interior Minister Faeser to immediately examine and revise concepts together with the states. This also involves the equipment and competencies of our security authorities.”
The airport has announced structural measures
Hamburg Airport had already announced structural measures to improve safety at the airport entrances on Monday. But spokeswoman Katja Bromm couldn’t yet say what exactly those would be. But it will “very soon be clear what exactly will go there”. According to the airport, additional security measures are currently being introduced until these measures have been fully implemented.
An arrest warrant was issued against the hostage taker on Monday evening. As the public prosecutor’s office announced, in addition to taking hostages and abducting minors, the 35-year-old is also accused of offenses under the Weapons Act. Pre-trial detention was ordered due to the risk of escape.
The public prosecutor also provided further details about the crime. According to the investigation, the Turkish citizen used a ruse to gain access to his ex-wife’s apartment in Stade on Saturday and forcibly abducted the daughter who lived there in a rental car. The man is said to have threatened the 38-year-old, who had sole custody of their daughter and called for help, with a semi-automatic pistol and fired a shot into the air.
The 35-year-old gave up after tough negotiations
When he arrived at the airport, he said via the police emergency call that he had a bomb in his vehicle and was demanding that he and his daughter leave the country for Turkey, the public prosecutor’s office said.
Only after tough negotiations with the police did the 35-year-old give up and hand over his physically uninjured daughter to special forces. In addition to the firearm, according to the public prosecutor’s office, a homemade dummy of an explosive belt was also seized. It was a book wrapped in aluminum foil with wires stuck into it.