Politicians have slammed a prosecutor’s decision to almost immediately free migrants who hurled a man onto the railway tracks at Dresden-Zschachwitz S-Bahn station as the train approached.
Just before 5 am on Friday, a Moroccan man and a Libyan followed a 40-year-old after he disembarked a train, and asked him to light their cigarettes. When he declined, telling the migrants he was in a hurry to get to work, the duo tore the Dresden local’s bicycle away and threw it at him, causing the man to fall onto the tracks.
According to local media, the North Africans then kicked the victim and used their feet to prevent him from getting back onto the platform — even as the S-Bahn train rolled into the station.
The driver was able to stop the train only a few yards from where the German man was stranded on the tracks, who got away with just an injured hand.
S-Bahn staff alerted police, who were able to arrest the suspects on another train shortly after the incident. Both men were under the influence of alcohol and already known to the police. Also, neither had bought a ticket for the S-Bahn, and the Libyan was found in possession of hashish.
The Dresden prosecutor’s office is investigating the men for grievous bodily harm and dangerous interference in railway traffic. But despite this, officials released the asylum seekers on the same day.
Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) deputy head in the Landtag, Christian Piwarz, slammed the decision, asking how prosecutors had not taken into account the attempt to kill a man — a consideration he said would “make the charges stick”.
Jens Maier, a judge of the regional court and a candidate for the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, took to Facebook to write: “I don’t understand why the perpetrators have been set loose.”
Since Chancellor Angela Merkel launched the country’s ‘open borders’ policy in 2015, there have been a number of allegations insisting that police and prosecutors in Germany have been too lenient towards criminals with foreign backgrounds.
In August last year, a German mother said she was reduced to tears when she learned the public prosecutor’s office in Offenburg had discontinued proceedings against a 30-year-old Afghan who molested six children between the ages of five and 12 in an indoor swimming pool.
Despite the fact that the migrant pinched the children’s thighs and pulled a girl’s bikini top off and exposed her chest, whilst a companion of the accused stood at the edge of the pool “with a clear erection”, the public prosecutor declared that “no criminal act” had taken place.
According to Baden Online, the prosecutor said: “The fact that the [accused] touched the children’s naked skin doesn’t necessarily imply any sexual motive since children in the swimming pool are, of course, only poorly clothed.”
Stating that “the same is true with regards to his pulling off the bikini top and exposing the breast”, the prosecutor added: ‘There can be no connection between the actions of the accused, and any possible erection of a companion.”
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