Iraqi Suffers Racist Attack in Germany

27 August, 2007

MAGDEBURG, Germany: An Iraqi man was racially abused and beaten with a baseball bat in the third xenophobic attack in Germany in less than a week, police said yesterday.

The 36-year-old Iraqi was attacked by an unidentified right-wing extremist in the eastern town of Magdeburg on Friday evening, six days after assaults on eight Indians and two Africans in two other towns.

Police said the suspected neo-Nazi set his dog on the victim and hit him on the back of the head with a baseball bat before fleeing after a witness raised the alarm.

Police said that the attacker, who also uttered racial slurs at the Iraqi, faced charges of incitement to racial hatred and aggravated assault.

A 29-year-old German was ordered to be kept in detention on Saturday, following another racist attack on two Africans which put a Sudanese man in hospital on August 18.

The unnamed man was arrested on Friday along with an accomplice, aged 26, who was freed on police bail.

They are accused of beating up the Sudanese and an Egyptian man, following a wine festival in the village of Guntersblum, near the town of Mainz in western Germany.

The Indians were also attacked during a festival on the night of August 18 in the small town of Muegeln in Germany’s former communist east.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the attack as “extremely grim and shameful” and a government spokesman said it was harmful to Germany’s image abroad.

The deputy president of the European Commission, Franco Frattini, called for the banning of the neo-Nazi NPD party after the attack in Muegeln.

He said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper yesterday that neo-Nazis represented “a threat” and “an ulcerous cancer for democratic countries like Germany”.