No reliable findings on the means used in hostage-taking
Created: 12/13/2022, 4:00 p.m
The wall of the Burg correctional facility.
© Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert/dpa
Saxony-Anhalt's Justice Minister Franziska Weidinger (CDU) has not confirmed media reports on the alleged use of a self-made weapon in the course of the hostage-taking in the JVA Burg.
The investigations into the background continued, she could not yet provide any detailed information, Weidinger said in a government survey on Tuesday in the state parliament.
Magdeburg – "This concerns details of the means of crime, this concerns police reports as to whether a shot was actually fired."
Weidinger did not go into detail about the facts of the matter when MPs asked several times about a possible weapon.
"I can tell you that is suspected and reported as such.
But I don't have any reliable information on this yet."
A spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Naumburg told the German Press Agency that he had not yet received any concrete information.
He could not confirm the use of a weapon.
The responsible public prosecutor's office in Stendal does not yet have any files and could not say anything about the possible use of a weapon, as a spokesman said on request.
On Monday evening, the right-wing extremist Halle assassin temporarily seized power over two employees in the Burg prison in Saxony-Anhalt.
The 30-year-old was overpowered by other correctional officers inside the prison.
The act lasted less than an hour.
Weidinger did not rule out moving the prisoner to another federal state.
"One option is to take the prisoner out of his or her environment," she said in the state parliament.
The Halle assassin is currently being held in a "particularly secured cell" in the JVA Burg.
According to Weidinger, the hostage-taking is said to have occurred in a "smaller, enforcement area".
However, this is said not to have been a particularly secure cell.
The Halle assassin is considered an uncooperative and difficult prisoner.
On the Pentecost weekend of 2020, as a defendant in the Halle trial, he had already tried to escape from Halle JVA.
During a yard walk, he climbed a 12-foot fence and spent five minutes unsupervised looking for a way out of prison before court officials caught him again.
dpa