Nightly car-burnings have been going on for years in the
otherwise relatively safe German capital but the number has recently surged,
reaching 47 in the past three nights alone.
Mayor Klaus Wowereit said the attacks had once been
politically motivated, targeting luxury cars in neighborhoods such as
Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg where there are active youth scenes linked to
anarchists and the far left.
“But the latest incidents are different. The fires are being
lit across the area,” he said.
German media have speculated the arsonists might be from the
far right or left, or possibly just youths out for a thrill, raising concern
that Germany might suffer violence similar to the riots seen in London and
other British cities this month.
But Wowereit, who is seeking re-election in September, said
the burnings had “nothing to do with” the British riots.
Already more than 130 cars have been engulfed in flames this
year, similar to the annual totals since the phenomenon appeared in 2007. But
Berlin police are at a loss to profile the arsonists or explain their motives.
Dieter Wiefelspuetz, member of Parliament and crime expert
for the center-left Social Democrats who govern Berlin, called the attacks “a
precursor to terrorism.” He recalled that the far-left Red Army Faction active
in the 1970s and 1980s began with arson and before resorting to bombings and
assassinations.
RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof once said: “If one sets a car on
fire, that is a criminal offense. If one sets hundreds of cars on fire, that is
political action.” RANDOM TARGETS But the president of the German police trade
union, Bernhard Witthaut, warned against reading too much into the arsonists’
motives, saying this could encourage copy-cat crime.
“Anyone who talks up the arsonists as quasi terrorists is
just encouraging more nights of fires and is stabbing the Berlin police in the
back,” he said.
Despite extra patrols and helicopter surveillance, nine
vehicles were destroyed by fire in the early hours of Thursday and three
damaged.
The cars appear to be chosen at random, not particularly new
expensive models, in areas varying from wealthy neighborhoods like
Charlottenburg in west Berlin to working-class suburbs like
Neu-Hohenschoenhausen in the east.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she believed Germany would be
spared British-style riots but was “very troubled” by the arson attacks in
Berlin. “What kind of behavior is this?” she asked. “People’s lives are being
put at risk in cold blood.” Only one person has been convicted for burning cars
so far, a 43-year-old unemployed Berlin man who got a 22-month suspended jail
sentence and 300 hours of community service last week for setting fire to a
BMW.
A prosecutor involved in such cases, Tobias Kaehne, told
Reuters that convictions for car arson were rare, partly because witnesses were
hard to come by, and most cases that went to court resulted in acquittal.
