Berlin
Racist attack on woman – police admit mistakes
According to the police, the racist incident took place in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg. Photo: Hubert Link/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Last weekend in Berlin, a 17-year-old was racially insulted and brutally attacked on a tram. Only a few days later did the police correct an initial account of the incident.
After a brutal attack on a 17-year-old girl in Berlin over the weekend, the police admitted a mistake in their first account on Sunday.
The question was whether the dispute broke out because of a missing corona mask or whether it was actually about racism, as the young woman later emphasized in an emotional video. The police said the information used “came from the criminal complaints recorded on the spot, which, as further investigations have shown, were worded in an ambiguous way”. dpa also initially adopted the original description of the police in a report without mentioning the victim’s references to racist insults.
The evaluation of videos showed that “the young people wore a mouth and nose cover when getting on and off the tram and only pulled it down briefly during the argument with the six adults that followed the racist insults.” Most of the six suspected adults did not wear masks. The police had arrested three suspected attackers on Saturday evening. Yesterday, the police added to the first message and wrote about “racist insult and assault” and looked for witnesses.
In the almost ten-minute video from the hospital, the 17-year-old told of the attack, sometimes crying: “I was beaten up yesterday because I’m a foreigner.” She was held, six men and women beat and kicked her, hit her in the head, pulled her hair and racially abused her. She screamed and begged for help, but despite many people present, no one helped her.