Admin I Tuesday, June 25, 2024
HAMBURG – A 35-year-old man who abducted his daughter, drove his car to the Hamburg airport and provoked an hours-long stand-off with police last November that caused major disruptions to air travel was today sentenced to 12 years in imprisonment.
A German court found the man guilty of hostage-taking, kidnapping, intentional bodily harm and illegal possession of ammunition.
“Twelve years’ imprisonment for this insane act. That is our answer,” said presiding judge Torsten Schwarz in Hamburg on Tuesday in granting the prosecutor’s request for a 12-year prison sentence.
The defendant had largely confessed to the crimes. The verdict is not yet final and may be appealed.
On the evening of November 4, the defendant abducted his daughter from his ex-wife’s apartment in the town of Stade, west of Hamburg.
He then drove to the airport – roughly 70 kilometres away – at high speed with the 4-year-old girl in the car. At a gate near the terminals, he broke through three barriers into a heavily restricted area with the rental car and drove onto the airport apron near the runways.
There he threw two incendiary devices from the car. Two columns of fire shot up in the middle of ongoing flight operations at the airport, as video footage shown during the trial showed.
The accused fired three times into the air with a live pistol – once directly next to a Turkish Airlines plane that had landed shortly before, in which the crew was still present.
The 35-year-old demanded that he be provided with a plane to travel to Turkey with his daughter and threatened to blow himself and the child up.
“Either they must kill us or we leave,” he said at the time, according to prosecutors. A supposed explosive belt he claimed to have later turned out to be a dummy fake.
The disruption to flight operations, which lasted more than 20 hours, had repercussions throughout Europe.
