Spectacular operation

German hostage-taker stuck between trees

Symbolic image

(Bild: Uta Rojsek-Wiedergut)

New details about the escape from the police: German man got stuck between two trees in his car south of Graz. 28-year-old escaped from a closed clinic in Bavaria with accomplices.

After the spectacular escape of four criminals by taking hostages from a closed facility in Bavaria, two of the wanted men were caught in Styria. Details of the second arrest in Premstätten (district of Graz-Umgebung) have now emerged. After the large-scale police operation around Hartberg - a witness had seen the wanted man - an alert search for the man, who was classified as violent and was probably in Styria because of contacts in the drug scene, was initially unsuccessful. Investigation results from the Styrian Criminal Police Office (search group) and information from colleagues from the Einsatzgruppe zur Bekämpfung der Straßenkriminalität (EGS) finally led to an abandoned farm south of Graz.

Wild chase through the forest
When the EGS tried to arrest the criminal (28), who was sitting in a car in front of the building, on Wednesday evening, he stepped on the gas. What followed was a mile-long chase through the forest that ended with the German getting stuck in the car between two trees. The getaway car was wrecked and a police vehicle was also towed away.

Investigators seized several thousand euros from the fugitive, which he had taken in burglaries in Styria, Carinthia, Lower Austria and Burgenland. He was presumably planning his further escape.

Incidentally, the criminal did not say much after his sensational arrest, except that the hostage-taking and the escape had happened under the influence of drugs. He and his accomplices had consumed the drugs in a psychiatric ward. As reported, the first offender was caught in Eastern Styria at the end of August.

Remaining members of the gang caught in Turkey
It was announced on Saturday that all four have now been caught. The handcuffs also clicked in Turkey. That is where the two members of the gang had ended up - more precisely in the Bulgarian-Greek-Turkish border triangle. According to the Turkish authorities, the men were noticed in a migration center in the city of Edirne on 30 August. A check revealed that they were the men wanted on arrest warrants. 

One of the two, a 31-year-old Bosnian, was deported to Germany on Saturday morning and taken to a Bavarian prison. The deportation to Germany of the second man, a 27-year-old Kosovar, is still being examined, the police said.