Cars set on fire in Berlin in possible copycat incident

[Nerthus]

Cars set on fire in Berlin in possible copycat incident

7 November 2005

BERLIN - More police were ordered onto the streets of the German capital Monday after five cars were set on fire in a poor district - fuelling fears of copycat violence like the rioting sweeping France.

"The extra patrols are a preventive measure," said Berlin police spokesman.

The cars were burned in five separate streets in Berlin's Moabit district, a poor region with a high number of foreigners a few kilometres from the central government district. Nobody was injured in the attacks.

Police said nobody had claimed responsibility for the attacks and that all possible motives were being investigated.

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[Menydh]

Germany investigates "individual imitators" of the French riots

Libertad Digital
November 9, 2005

Ten cars were put on fire in Berlin and Köln while police investigates a possible action of "individual imitators" of the riots in France. In France, in spite of the curfew decreed in some cities and of the emergency measures, the riots have reached a toll of 617 vehicles on fire. Home Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sees a "rather sensible decrease" in the violence. In Spain, the speaker of the Spanish Police Confederation (CEP), has demanded that measures against the Mahgrebian immigration be taken as they don't integrate in Europe.

Another ten vehicles on fire in Berlin and Köln add up to those other registered in the past days both in Berlin and Bremen, while the police investigates if there is any relation with the French riots, although they don't believe that the situation is similar to that in France.

The investigations have started from the probability that the provokers have been "isolated individual imitators", but not that there exists a motivation or social dimension similar to the one which has provoked the French riots. The Köln Police has excluded any relation between the four vehicles put on fire in that city and the riots in France.


[source]