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Tram in Berlin (archive image)
Photo: ALEXANDER BECHER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
After the attack on a 17-year-old in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, the police corrected their account of the incident.
Several adults are said to have racially insulted and physically attacked the young woman.
The first press release from the police on Sunday said that the dispute arose because the adults had pointed out to the young people that they were missing a mask.
Mouth and nose protection is mandatory because of the corona pandemic in public transport.
The state service of the dpa news agency and various media picked up the report.
The person concerned, Dilan Sözeri, then spoke up via Instagram – and described the incident from her point of view.
"I was beaten up yesterday because I'm a foreigner," he says right at the beginning of the video.
Numerous media reports have twisted the truth so that it now has to go public via social media.
After 23 hours, the video has already been viewed more than three million times.
Contrary to what was described in the first reports, she wore a mouth and nose cover, according to Sözeri.
After a verbal altercation on the tram, which she said included racist insults, she was beaten and kicked outside.
"I should be careful what I say in his country," said one of the alleged perpetrators.
Two men finally held her while other people punched and kicked her.
On Wednesday, the Berlin police admitted an error in the first presentation.
She corrected her original press release.
The information used “came from the criminal complaints recorded on site, which, as further investigations have shown, were formulated in a misleading manner”.
The evaluation of videos had shown that “the young person wore a mouth and nose cover when getting on and off the tram and only pulled it down briefly during the argument with the six adults that followed the racist insults,” said the police now.
Most of the six suspected adults did not wear masks.
According to the police, the 17-year-old said she had been racially insulted by two women.
After both the young people and six other people involved got off at the Greifswalder Straße stop, they said they were held out of the group, hit and kicked.
Three preliminary arrests
The bus stop is said to have been busy at the time, but despite calls for help, none of the passers-by stepped in, says Sözeri in her video.
Mobile phone recordings, some of which are blurred, are shown in the video and are intended to show the suspected perpetrators and uninvolved observers.
"I'm really physically and mentally exhausted because I can't understand how people like that can still live on the planet in 2022." With the video, she wanted to make a statement to the world that things couldn't go on like this.
The police are now looking for witnesses to the attack.
After the incident, alerted police officers had provisionally arrested three men aged 42, 44 and 51 as alleged participants.
The three denied the allegations.
The 17-year-old had to be treated in a hospital, where she was admitted for observation.
According to her own statements, she suffered a concussion, among other things.
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