Muslim classmates beat and ostracized David Brough throughout secondary school because he was gay and German, and then a counselor told him to accept the abuse as part of the school’s commitment to diversity.
“They hated me because I am German, because I was already a homosexual boy back then, and because I did not submit to Sharia, to Islamic laws on German soil,” said Brough, who founded the media outlet Der Volksmut.
“During my school days, I was mistreated, beaten, ostracized, and insulted every day by Muslim classmates,” said Brough.
Muslim students beat him because he was German and gay.
"They hated me because I am German, because I was already a homosexual boy back then, and because I did not submit to Sharia, to Islamic laws on German soil," said David Brough (@_david_brg).
Brough, who says he attended school in Wuppertal in North Rhine-Westphalia, described years of daily mistreatment that he said began after elementary school. He said he started first grade in 2000.
He said classmates beat, insulted, and isolated him and that he was targeted in physical education class. Brough called the school a “Sharia school,” a term he uses for campuses with a large Muslim student population and, in his account, little protection for students who do not follow conservative Islamic norms.
The claims have not been independently verified. Remix News did not publish records from the school or court, and there was no immediate comment from Wuppertal school officials.
Yara was the last German in her classroom, and she ended up being bullied and stabbed.
Yara was only 6 but was "bullied and ostracized, and in the end even seriously injured."
Yara's father said that parent-teacher meetings required a translator.
Brough said he sought help from a guidance counselor and reported homophobic assaults and bullying.
According to Brough, the guidance counselor, who was a card-carrying member of the far-left Social Democrats (SPD), replied: “David, we are a school of diversity. You just have to endure it. You have to tolerate other cultural conditions. And in Islam, being gay is haram, a sin.”
In later posts, Brough said the school later received public funding after being designated a “School without Racism.” He said that label, and the political climate in North Rhine-Westphalia at the time, left little room to acknowledge victims like him.
A young German girl spoke of the nightmare she experiences from her Muslim classmates.
"Sometimes they say to me that I’m German. And yeah, then they laugh at me, curse at me and tease me. Others are always Muslim, and they ask me why I am not a Muslim. I said I am a… pic.twitter.com/gggVOm9IPs
Brough said his class had about 30 students and only two Germans. As Remix News has routinely reported, the German students in such classes often fare poorly and become targets of bullying and sometimes outright physical assaults.
He said girls who wore headscarves were barred from swimming and that some girls were sexually coerced. He also said a Jewish classmate left the school and that three Muslim classmates told him during a trip to the Auschwitz memorial that he would have been killed there. Those accounts likewise could not be independently confirmed.
"Why don’t you have any German friends?"
"Because they don’t belong to us. I can’t stand the Germans too much."
Thousands of German students now face discrimination and sometimes outright assault from foreigners in their school systems.
Brough said he learned Islamic practices such as Ramadan and Friday prayers before he felt any connection to German culture. He said he later had to “re-socialize as a German” while at university.
“This country, Germany, and the politicians of this country, have not only sold out our cultural identity, our dignity, and our pride,” he said. “The worst part is that they sold out our children.”
Other young German men have been targeted in schools, with some of them willing to speak out. In a street interview this year, a young man described how five Syrian classmates raped him in a school toilet in 10th grade and were later acquitted despite DNA evidence.
This German youth says that 5 Syrians raped him in 10th grade in a school toilet.
Afterwards, the judge just let them go.
When asked by @eingollan_real if they were punished in court, he said that DNA samples were taken which confirmed the attack, but that "nothing"… pic.twitter.com/XbqR00INX7
Germany has seen growing debate over violence, religious norms and integration in schools with high migrant enrollments. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Muslim students made up about 20 percent of the student population in the 2024-25 school year, with higher shares at some schools. Gay teachers have also been victimized by Muslim students.
German schools face increasing violence due to mass immigration.
In the city of Cottbus, the public prosecutor has launched 18 criminal investigations into cases of serious violence in the migrant-dominated Regine Hildebrandt Primary School.
Brough said he is speaking now because he believes conditions in some German schools have worsened and because other former students have remained silent.
Germany's school system is a major disaster due to mass immigration.
"More than 41,000 children across Germany had to repeat 1st grade last school year… Many of these children have a migrant background and hardly speak any German when they start school."
For more than four months, Brian, a commercial fisherman in his late 40s, had been waiting for the weather conditions to be right for us to go fishing outside Bagenkop, a small harbor town on the southern tip of the Danish island of Langeland.
“One more problem has come up,” Brian told me over the phone in early May. “I have lost my fishing license." He was no longer allowed to sell fish for a living. Instead of preparing his boat to go out to sea and to show me how fishing in Denmark had changed over his lifetime, Brian was now removing the registration number from its hull.
Across Denmark, coastal fishing communities are shrinking as catches decline. At the same time, warming seas, overfishing and pollution are putting increasing pressure on marine ecosystems.
“Plenty of fish in the sea”? Not anymore, say UN experts, with 35% of the world’s marine fish stocks being fished faster than they can be biologically replaced. Today, more than half of the fish we consume worldwide comes from fish farms.
This summer, sea temperatures along Denmark’s beaches reached 28 degrees Celsius, a record high. On September 2, the UN Environment Program warned that the world is likely to cross 1.5 C of warming above pre-industrial levels within the next few years. As the climate warms, the pressure on marine ecosystems grows.
In August, Iceland voted not to restart accession talks with the European Union, in part because of concern that it would lose sovereign control of its fishing industry. While fishing is not as major a part of Denmark’s GDP as it is Iceland’s, the EU’s impact has meant independent Danish fishermen have struggled to survive in the face of corporate competition.
For Brian, though, it’s about more than regulations. It is about watching the ocean he grew up with slowly disappear.
Nets covered in black slime
His story reflects a larger shift happening along the Danish coastline. Coastal fishermen, once a central part of the country’s history, are a vanishing breed.
For Brian, it was never about the money. Even when he was a teenager and he told his father he wanted to be a fisherman, his father said it was a bad idea. But the pull of the sea was irresistible. His life as a fisherman began as a hobby, accumulating experience and knowledge just by spending as much time as possible on water. He learned how to read the currents, the weather, and fish movements through experience rather than education. In 2019, despite the uncertainty surrounding the industry, he bought a commercial fishing boat. “When I started as a teenager, there were fish everywhere,” he said. But over the years, the numbers have dwindled starkly. Every few years, another Danish harbor became economically unsustainable. First Bogense, then Kerteminde, later Nyborg and Spodsbjerg. Each one of them followed the same pattern: fewer fish, declining landings, and growing questions about whether it was possible for small fisheries to continue their operations.
While working on this story, I spoke to ten small-scale Danish fisheries across the country. Half of them said they do not expect to still be fishing five years from now. In 2019, they said, ten nets could bring in between 150-200 kilos of plaice on a single trip. Two years later, the same nets would return with only two kilos. As the catches became smaller, so did the possibility of keeping a commercial license. Brian no longer caught and sold enough fish to keep his permit.
One day still stands out to him as perhaps the single worst he has experienced at sea. He had three nets in the water. The first one he hauled in looked normal. The second held fewer fish than expected. Then he started pulling in the third — the net was completely empty and covered in thick, black slime.
Marine biologist Stiig Markager told me that what Brian saw was a tell-tale sign of oxygen depletion. In 2025, around 40% of Danish marine areas were affected by low oxygen levels. Oxygen depletion happens when too many nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture and wastewater, enter the sea. These nutrients fuel large algae blooms.
When the algae die and sink to the seabed, bacteria begin decomposing them, consuming enormous amounts of oxygen in the process. Climate change exacerbates the problem. “Warmer water contains less oxygen. At the same time, biological processes speed up when temperatures rise.” In practice that means algae grow faster, oxygen is consumed more quickly, and deep waters struggle to recover. Together, these processes reinforce each other. “When oxygen disappears, it damages the seabed ecosystem,” Markager said.
A new global study argues that aquatic deoxygenation is approaching an “unsafe space” and should be considered a potential tenth planetary boundary. The global ocean has lost around 2% of its oxygen over the past 50 years. The consequences for marine life are catastrophic, forcing either flight or suffocation.
Marine biologists have studied oxygen depletion in the Danish seas for decades. But, Brian says, “fishers are often the first people to see the effects of that depletion, directly in their nets.” It is a first-hand experience, fishers say, that is often discounted or ignored. Many independent coastal fishers say they feel increasingly excluded from political conversations about the ocean, despite spending their working lives at sea.
Source: DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy, Aarhus University, Oxygen depletion in Danish waters, 2014–2025.
“It feels like we’re not really welcome anymore,” Brian said. He believes small-scale fisheries like his are being pushed out while decisions about the seas are increasingly made by those on land. “I think they don’t want so many people out there seeing what’s actually happening.”
For years, debates about oxygen depletion in Denmark have become deeply political. Marine scientist Stiig Markager says that the results of environmental research have repeatedly clashed with agricultural and political interests. “There is complete opposition from agriculture and from Venstre (a major center-right political party) to making research publicly available,” he said. “There is a clear political strategy from Venstre that there must be no interference with agriculture.”
According to Markager, tensions between environmental researchers and agricultural interests intensified during the early 2000s, as scientists linked nitrogen runoff from farming to oxygen depletion in Danish waters. Despite decades of plans and political promises, Markager says, the recovery many researchers hoped for never fully arrived.
For this story, I also contacted both the Minister of Environment and the Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries to ask for an interview about the state of Danish waters and the future of small-scale fishing. Neither had time to answer questions.
“When I started as a teenager, there were fish everywhere.” Brian said in BK Kar“Fishers are often the first people to discover oxygen depletion, directly in their nets,” Brian explained."I have lost my fishing license," Brian said on a phone call.
What remains is behind glass
One harbor that has felt the impact of the changing nature of Danish waters is Bønnerup Strand, which has transformed from a fishing town into a tourist destination. The harbor now features an ice cream shop, a hot dog kiosk, a seafood restaurant, and a mini golf course. The iconic blue Danish fishing boats are conspicuous only by their absence. Instead, boats built for leisure, not commercial fishing, are docked at the harbor.
Along the quay, an outdoor exhibition has been installed behind glass panels. It started last year, created by a local group of volunteers trying to preserve what Bønnerup Strand used to be. The pictures show fishing nets piled high, men in blue overalls, boats unloading their catch, and fish laid out in crates.
Movement. Noise. Purpose. It was a harbor bustling with life. Hans, in his 60s now, was once a fisherman in Bønnerup Strand. He walks past the diorama and tells me that twenty years ago “there were 60 or 70 fishing boats here, now there are two.” Some of the independent fishers chose to leave, their lives no longer making economic sense. Others lost their licenses. The rest have disappeared, not all at once, but gradually. Some left before it was too late, others had their boats seized by the bank when their revenue became too low. “Quite a lot of my colleagues had their boats taken by them," says Hans, referring to banks who repossessed boats because independent fishermen no longer made enough money to pay for them.
You could say that the gradual suffocation of the Danish seas began in 1909 with the invention of the artificial nitrogen fertilizer that transformed global agriculture. Artificial fertilizer rapidly became central to modern-day farming. By 1959, nearly 75% of farms were using fertilizer to increase crop production. At first, the growing amounts of nitrogen entering the sea did not appear harmful. During the 1960s and 70s, the extra nutrients actually increased algae and plankton growth, creating more food for some fish species. “There were actually more fish,” says Markager, the marine scientist, “but by the mid-1980s, the consequences had become impossible to ignore.”
Fish auction hall, Esbjerg, 1968. Tonny Sørensen. Esbjerg harbor, 1972. Knud Rasmussen.Fish auction, Esbjerg, 1934. Gustav Bjerknæs .
On October 8, 1986, on Danish television fishermen in Gilleleje were seen pulling dead lobsters from the sea. The images became the subject of alarmed national conversation. For the first time, the public saw what oxygen depletion meant for life beneath the surface of the sea.
Hans, the fisherman from Bønnerup Strand, told me he was part of the television coverage himself. “Fishers had talked about pollution long before the dead lobsters,” he said. “But suddenly people started paying attention.” The public outrage pushed Denmark to act. In 1987, the country introduced its first Water Environment Plan, aiming to reduce phosphorus emissions from wastewater by 80% and nitrogen emissions by 50% within five years. For many fishers and marine scientists, it became the first real sign that the environmental crisis in Danish waters was finally being taken seriously. During the 1990s, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution declined significantly. Water in several fjords and coastal areas became clearer, and conditions slowly began improving. For a moment, it appeared the damage could still be reversed.
But by the early 2000s, many coastal fisheries were once again experiencing declining catches and, with it, a growing uncertainty about the future. Hans was one of those affected. Coming from a family that had fished for five generations, the harbor was never a tourist destination for Hans. It was a way of life. But on a sunny Friday in April back 2005, he sailed out to Kattegat for plaice. He knew it was over. “I said to my employee: “this is the last trip. I start working on land from Monday.”” He had made the decision months earlier, as the numbers of fish dwindled and regulations tightened.
It wasn’t an easy choice, but he had four children to think of. Climate change had taken away his livelihood. “You can’t do anything about it,” he said. “If you think too much about it, you go crazy.” Researchers describe this kind of environmental grief as solastalgia, the distress caused by watching a familiar environment change beyond recognition. Unlike homesickness, solastalgia happens while still remaining in the same place. For coastal fishers, the sea remains physically present, but the ecosystem they once knew and depended on, is disappearing.
Adapting has always been part of the job, says Hans. “There has always been a species that disappeared and then another one came.” But eventually, nothing was replacing what was lost anymore.
Hans in his shop, Møllefisk.
In 2002, marine scientists Stiig Markager and Peter Bondo Christensen from DMU, the Danish Environmental Research Institute, published research showing that around 75% of Denmark’s nitrogen emissions originated from agriculture through waterways and atmospheric pollution. The findings intensified tensions between marine scientists, politicians, and agricultural organizations about who was responsible for the declining marine environment.
In response to the worsening marine crisis, Denmark established DMU in 1989 to monitor oxygen depletion, nutrient pollution, and ecological changes beneath the surface. But their findings were inconvenient. By 2007, after nearly two decades as an independent institution, DMU was folded into Aarhus University as part of a wider restructuring of Denmark’s research sector. The decision sparked criticism from several environmental researchers and organizations, who feared the changes could weaken the independence of Danish environmental monitoring.
“Agriculture succeeded in closing DMU,” former researcher Bo Normander told the media. “Nature has lost.” In 2015, the Danish government introduced the controversial Landbrugspakke, easing environmental regulations on fertilizer use in an effort to increase agricultural production.
Critics warned that the policy could worsen nitrogen pollution in Danish waters at a time when oxygen depletion remained a recurring problem. In the years that followed, researchers from Aarhus University reported rising nitrogen emissions instead of the reductions politicians had promised. Markager argues that despite decades of environmental warnings, nitrogen pollution reductions largely stalled. While nitrogen pollution in Danish waters declined significantly after the first Danish Water Environment Plans in the 1980s and 1990s, researchers say the reductions have largely stagnated over the last 20-25 years.
Now, Denmark is trying to reverse that trend. In the first week of September, the country passed a historic new law changing how agricultural nitrogen is regulated. The law will take effect in 2027 and represents a significant tightening of the rules introduced in 2015.
Under the system introduced in 2015, farmers were allowed to fertilize closer to what was considered the agronomic optimum for their crops, while still operating within nationally defined nitrogen quotas and other rules. The new system moves in the opposite direction. Instead of relying primarily on broad national rules, nitrogen regulation will increasingly take the environmental sensitivity of individual areas into account.
Where a farm is located will thus matter much more. The requirements will vary depending on factors such as whether fields drain towards vulnerable rivers or coastal waters, and whether they lie above areas important for groundwater and drinking-water protection. For farmers, this means that the amount of nitrogen they can use will become more restricted in areas where the surrounding environment is particularly vulnerable.
For fishermen like Brian and Hans, the law represents a change they have long been asking for: an attempt to redress the damage done to Danish seas.
“I don’t think we’ll have fish out here ever again.” said Hans Fisker, owner Møllefisk at Bønnerup Strand“Quite a lot of my colleagues had their boats taken by them." Boat on land, Bønnerup Strand.
But understanding how the water became polluted is more complicated than it first appears. Much of the pollution data commonly referred to in public debates focuses on point-source pollution, which emanates from identifiable sources like wastewater treatment plants, industrial discharge, and fish farms, and is generally easier to measure. But most nitrogen pollution in Danish waters actually comes from diffuse sources, mainly agricultural runoff carried from fields through rainwater, rivers, groundwater, and the atmosphere. Unlike point sources, diffuse pollution is far harder to measure directly and comes with greater uncertainty in the data. As a result, wastewater pollution can often appear to be the biggest issue, even though agriculture remains the dominant source of nitrogen input into Danish waters.
For Hans, the consequences appear almost irreversible. These days, the fish often do not return. “There are still plaice here, but they’re too thin. They don’t gain weight.” Scientists point to several overlapping causes, and the suggested solutions are just as diverse. Activists call for stricter rules, fishers say there are already too many. Farmers reject blame, and governments insist wastewater is already being purified. Plenty of fingers are being pointed, but the problem remains.
Hans doesn’t expect it to change. “I don’t think we’ll have fish out here ever again.” These days, he’s on the other side of the industry, buying catch from fisheries and selling it to customers. “People have to get used to the fact that we don’t always have everything available on demand. With a changing climate, fish shops may no longer offer cod, salmon, or plaice like we’ve been used to.” Instead, he says, squid is becoming the new normal.
Still, while independent fisheries disappear, the demand for fish continues to grow. Instead of restoring the ocean, parts of the fishing industry are increasingly moving onto land.
In northern Denmark, companies like Skagen Salmon are now raising fish entirely inside closed artificial systems, where the water, oxygen, and temperature are carefully controlled. Outside, Skagen Salmon looks like a factory. No windows, just a large grey box near the coastline.
If the building had windows, the fish inside could look out at the sea. But these fish will never see, taste, or feel those waters. Instead, they are raised in artificial tanks until they reach market size. They are then slaughtered and sold to supermarkets and fish shops across the country.
https://youtu.be/XKDIe7PXMCw
Video from Skagen Salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS), by Victoria Jensen.
A 40-year-old man with an Arabic-sounding name is on trial this week at Glostrup District Court in Denmark on charges of rape, prolonged physical abuse, and death threats.
According to the indictment, there are two female complainants. One is the defendant’s long-term cohabitant, who says she was raped over the course of nine years, including next to her 4-year-old child while the child was in the bed. The other is a woman he is accused of picking up while working as a taxi driver, driving to a deserted location and raping her despite the victim telling him “no” and telling him repeatedly to stop.
Prosecutors from Copenhagen’s Vestegn Police say the alleged offenses took place on the western outskirts of Copenhagen and around Brøndby Strand between March 2016 and May 2025.
The prosecutors allege the woman who lived with the defendant was subjected to repeated rapes over nine years, accompanied by violence and threats. They say she was told she had to obey him, according to Islam.
The indictment describes her crying, trying to get away, being held down and repeatedly telling him, “No.” One count concerns the night of Nov. 19-20, 2025, when the alleged rape occurred in the same bed where her 4-year-old child was sleeping. It remains unclear whether the defendant is also the father of the child.
The man also faces charges of assaulting the cohabitant throughout the same period. Police say the violence included blows, kicks, hair-pulling, spitting, and throwing objects.
In some incidents, the defendant used wires and a knife to inflict harm, while in another incident, he threw an object, which resulted in the woman fracturing her wrist. Additional counts allege psychological control: she was not allowed to go out in public alone, drive a vehicle, see female friends, or hold a job. She also routinely received death threats.
Second rape allegation involves drunk taxi passenger
The second alleged rape is dated to Feb. 14, 2026, between 3:40 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.
Prosecutors say that when the defendant targeted her, the female victim was under the influence of alcohol and unable to resist or even know exactly where she was. The defendant allegedly drove her to a deserted area while working as a taxi driver and raped her.
The defendant has been in pre-trial custody at Vestre Fængsel. Prosecutors have asked for a permanent deportation order if he is convicted. A court-imposed name ban prevents publication of his identity.
Defense lawyer Millemaxine Isolde Cornelia Albrektsen told Presse-Fotos.dk that her client denies all of the allegations.
“In addition, I do not want to go into details. The information will come out in court,” she said.
The court trial began on Sept. 7 and a verdict is expected later this month.
The lead candidate for Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, has tied a potential Israeli arms manufacturer’s arrival in Sangerhausen to the party’s planned large-scale removal of foreigners required to leave Germany.
He said the Israeli company could be used in some capacity for a “remigration and deportation offensive.”
Siegmund’s statement has provoked considerable outrage, including from the left-wing party BSW, a potential coalition partner.
Speaking at a Magdeburg state parliament press conference, Siegmund declined to take a firm position on whether Elbit Systems should set up operations in the town.
He then connected military production to the AfD’s broader agenda: “We do not demonize the production of armaments across the board, because we will of course also need appropriate support in the later remigration and deportation offensive.”
Linking weapons production to a “remigration and deportation offensive“ quickly went viral on social media, with Essen SPD politician Ali Kaan Sevinc writing: “Now, Ulrich Siegmund is shedding his smiling facade and showing his true face and the AfD.“
Former CDU General Secretary Ruprecht Polenz commented: “This is called ethnic cleansing.”
The prospect of Elbit establishing a presence has already drawn local opposition, according to Welt. The BSW party is organizing protests together with residents of Sangerhausen against the Israeli company.
Siegmund did not clarify how the arms company would participate in remigration efforts.
The BSW is the only party that said it was open to meeting with the AfD to form a government coalition and the two parties are expected to meet in the near future. Notably, the BSW is considered a party with a strong opposition to Israel and routinely features images of destruction in Gaza and of Palestinian children in its campaign posters.
BSW federal chairman Fabio de Masi responded to Siegmund’s remark on X: “This shows they don’t want to govern at all and are desperately looking for a way out through provocation.”
AfD defense spokesman Rüdiger Lucassen defended Siegmund’s comments. He noted that deportations fall primarily under the responsibility of the state government and are normally carried out by state police. Once migrants reach the airport, however, German Federal Police assume control, since airports and airspace are within federal jurisdiction.
Lucassen added that the Bundeswehr could still play a supporting role: “Of course, the German Armed Forces can be deployed as part of administrative assistance for deportation flights.”
Israel’s Elbit Systems produces drones, howitzers and rocket launchers, among other military systems, but it remains unclear which items would be produced in Sangerhausen.
Siegmund stressed that the AfD does not reject arms production in principle: “Of course, also in the interest of internal security, its own stability and national defense. We are aware of that. That doesn’t fall from the sky.”
He drew a distinction, however, regarding exports, “But there is a big difference between sending armaments into foreign wars, even at our expense. And this puts us at risk of participating in foreign conflicts.”
Siegmund said the party is following developments in Sangerhausen but added that the economic benefits of a possible arms factory should not be ignored.
“Let’s take a close look: What is being produced there, under what conditions? And does this put us at risk of participating in foreign conflicts? Then, we see this as more than critical,” he added, signaling he may not back the arms factory in the end.
He concluded that the party has not yet taken a final stance on the project because the party has not received all the information they need to make a decision.
A 32-year-old man with an “Arabic-sounding name” is standing trial in Copenhagen City Court for charges that he subjected a 14-year-old girl to a “violent anal rape” on a park bench in February.
According to the indictment obtained by Presse-Fotos.dk, the brutal rape took place in Lersøparken along Tagensvej in Copenhagen on Feb. 23, 2026, between approximately 8:20 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.
Prosecutors say the man met the girl there and then used force to rape her, which also includes other sexual acts besides intercourse. Due to the nature of the case, further details from the indictment were not released by the news outlet that broke the story, Presse-Fotos.dk.
The news outlet notes that the accused man has an “Arabic-sounding name.” His first name has not been released to the public. However, the man holds Danish citizenship, which prevents him from being deported.
“The editorial office is familiar with the name of the 32-year-old, but a name ban prevents Press-photos.dk and other media from describing his identity more closely,” wrote Press-Photos.
The defendant denies the allegations and remains in custody at a Copenhagen prison pending the outcome of the trial.
Copenhagen Police press officer Troels Jensen wrote in a statement: “The other circumstances of the case appear during the main proceedings, which will continue on Sept. 28. We are not commenting on the details of the case as long as the main hearing is underway.”
Defense lawyer Christian Bjerrehuus has declined to comment on the case. Neither the lawyer nor police would say whether the accused and the girl knew each other beforehand.
Foreigners account for a massive share of thefts, sexual violence, and robberies on Paris public transport in 2025, according to new government data.
According to compilations from the SSMSI data files, foreigners accounted in 2025 for 87 percent of simple thefts on Île-de-France public transport, 60 percent of robberies, and 38 percent of physical assault.
In addition, foreigners account for 61 percent of sexual violence cases on Paris public transport and its surrounding regions.
National figures for foreigners committing crimes on public transport are lower but still high, approximately 76 percent of simple-theft suspects are foreigners and 71 percent of all theft suspects are foreigners.
Some groups are highly overrepresented among foreigners.
Maghrebi nationals, for instance, account for about 40 percent of theft suspects in transport nationwide, while making up roughly 2 percent of the national population, according to data analyst Marc Vanguard.
Des chiffres CHOC sur l'insécurité viennent de sortir.
Dans les transports en commun, les étrangers représentent 87% des mis en cause pour vols simples en Île-de-France, et 76% sur la France entière.
INSEE’s latest estimate puts foreigners at 9.1 percent of France’s population in 2025, or around 6.3 million people. Their share is higher in Île-de-France, especially in the multicultural Seine-Saint-Denis department, but the crime for foreigners is still disproportionately high.
In total, police and gendarmerie recorded 104,880 victims of theft, violence, or payment fraud in public transport nationwide in 2025, down 2 percent from 2024 and 22 percent from 2016 — the lowest level in a decade, including the pandemic years.
A Brazilian tourist was subjected to a vicious sexual assault on a French train on Wednesday morning, and only escaped being raped thanks to the intervention of a brave woman who filmed the assailant to scare him off.
Theft without violence still accounts for 77 percent of those victims. Thefts and payment frauds fell but recorded physical and sexual violence rose slightly, jumping 3 percent. Drug-use and trafficking suspects in transport rose another 5 percent after the sharp Olympic-year jump in 2024.
It should be noted that among the “French” perpetrators, their potential migration background is not recorded. There are approximately 10 million people in France with a foreign background, including second-generation citizens with a migration background. As a result, a French citizen who is an ethnic Algerian, for instance, would be recorded as a French perpetrator in all crime statistics. France does not keep data on the race of crime suspects, as required by national law.
More broadly speaking, there are estimates that foreigners and French citizens with a migration background account for two out of three crimes in France.
This public awareness campaign in France shows a White man as the harasser on a bus.
French interior ministry stats from recent years have shown that 69% of violent crimes, including sexual assaults and harassment, on public transport in the greater Paris region were… pic.twitter.com/H3fRwEWtK2
School year 2026-2027 kicked off in Greece with the traditional holy water blessing ceremony performed by a priest in front of pupils, students, teachers and parents. The new school season began today, Friday, September 11, not only in primary, middle and high schools but also in kindergartens. After the blessing ceremony, students are being informed […]
A Yemeni asylum seeker living in the Netherlands cannot rely on family reunification rules to bring over children from two additional marriages that Dutch law does not recognize, ruled the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The ECHR dismissed the migrant’s complaint on Tuesday, holding that Council of Europe states are not required to treat polygamous family arrangements as they would a monogamous household.
The man, 56, has three wives and 13 children from those unions. After arriving in the Netherlands in 2018 and receiving asylum, he was allowed to bring one wife and their eight children.
Dutch authorities refused entry to the five children born of his other two marriages, citing that “polygamy is prohibited in the Netherlands.”
He lost his challenges in the Dutch courts and then turned to Strasbourg, according to French newspaper Le Figaro. He argued the case was not about importing polygamy, because he was not seeking to bring the other two wives, only the remaining children. The court rejected the argument that the refusal violated his right to respect for family life.
If a European state “establishes an immigration policy that takes family ties into account,” it “cannot be obliged to recognize polygamous marriages that conflict with its own legal system,” the judges in Strasbourg ruled.
A tale of two Germanys
The first Germany represents illiterate Syrian migrant Ahmad A. and his 2 wives and 6 children. The entire family received free housing and welfare thanks to German taxpayers.
The court also noted that he could have divorced the two other wives, as Dutch authorities had proposed, but declined to do so.
Notably, the second wife is already in the Netherlands with her children after she received asylum in June 2025. However, the fact that she entered the Netherlands did not change the ruling, the ECHR stated.
“The fact that polygamy is prohibited in all member states of the Council of Europe shows that there is a strong European consensus on this issue,” the judges noted. Under those circumstances, “Member States have considerable discretion as to whether or not to grant fathers and children born of polygamy the right to family reunification.”
In France, an Ivorian polygamist has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for torture, rape, and for imposing a hard-line Islamic regime on his 4 wives and 29 children.
The 45-year-old Ivorian migrant, held in pretrial detention since 2022, was said to have stripped the home… pic.twitter.com/1NVsbWmJcl
A 33-year-old Cameroonian illegal migrant has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for raping a 75-year-old woman in her home in Ozoir-la-Ferrière, Seine-et-Marne, France.
The Seine-et-Marne criminal court handed down the sentence on Monday, along with a permanent ban from French territory and registration in a list of sexual and violent offenders (FIJAIS).
The attack occurred in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2024, which Remix News covered at the time. Shortly before 6:30 a.m., the intoxicated man, who had a whiskey bottle in his pocket, broke into the home of an elderly couple on a quiet residential street. He first entered the room of the victim’s husband, who is bedridden and severely disabled after a stroke. The husband cried out but could not intervene.
A French journalist says there is a shocking pattern of foreigners raping elderly women in France.
Just this week, a Moroccan migrant was arrested for raping and torturing a 74-year-old woman in Romainville with a telescopic baton.
The intruder then went to the 75-year-old woman’s bedroom and forced the woman to have unprotected sexual intercourse. He then demanded money and took a €50 note before leaving. He remained in the house for about 45 minutes.
Investigators identified him through video surveillance. On New Year’s Day, he traveled from Paris’s Saint-Lazare station to Ozoir-la-Ferrière after a night of heavy drinking during which he and two companions consumed five bottles of alcohol. Once in the town, he is believed to have gone first to the home of a prostitute he knew who lived on the same street; that woman then led him toward the victims’ house.
The defendant, who is married and has four children in Cameroon, entered France in 2022 after traveling through Libya and Italy. On arrival, he was housed free of charge in a maid’s room in Paris’s 16th arrondissement by the association “Surviving Insecurity – Diogenes,” for which he also worked. His asylum applications were rejected twice, and he was in an irregular situation at the time of the crime.
During the trial, the attorney general noted that ten years of detention would cost French taxpayers approximately €1 million.
The victim, now 78, has not left her home since the attack. She has said she believed she was going to die. Her son, who is in his fifties, has moved back in with his parents to care for them.
The victim’s lawyer, Christophe Gérard, told Le Figaro: “There are two types of rape: incestuous family rapes and those committed in the street, in parking lots, or even worse at home, the place where one is supposed to be safest. The events took place in the middle of the night, on New Year’s, on the 1st. The son left his parents’ house around 10:30 p.m., closed everything, before discovering in the early morning that his mother had been raped. It is a horrible and terrible crime.”
Just months ago, Remix News published in an in-depth news article covering at least 14 cases involving migrants raping elderly French women in recent years.
Go on a job interview in Germany and become a rape victim? That is what happened to one young woman, according to prosecutors.
Authorities say a 45-year-old German citizen, who originally from Kosovo, raped a 24-year-old woman during a job interview for a secretary position in an empty warehouse in the city of Kerpen. While the woman’s lawyer said she has been traumatized by the rape, the suspect said it was the “best sex” of his life.
Go on a job interview in Germany and get raped?
According to prosecutors, a 45-year-old “German” originally from Kosovo raped a 24-year-old woman during a job interview for a secretary position in an empty warehouse in the city of Kerpen.
During the “job interview,” he asked her a series of inappropriate questions, including whether she was still a virgin, say prosecutors.
When she tried to leave, he reportedly grabbed her handbag, blocked her way, and told her “she could not leave.” The German-Kosovar man then proceeded to press her against a wall, strip her, and rape her. The defendant repeatedly forced her to perform oral sex and sexual intercourse while asking her if “she enjoyed it.” Prosecutors say the woman only endured the rape because she was afraid the man would hurt her.
After the crime, he allegedly gave her €100, reports the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.
During the trial, he denied that he raped her and said, “She wanted it… she participated.”
The defendant, who owns his own company, reportedly has a wife and three children.
This is not the only case in Germany in which a migrant has been accused of rape in connection with a job interview. In Braunschweig in December 2022, a 37-year-old Syrian conducted an unauthorized “job interview” with a 19-year-old in the morning at a restaurant. That evening he went to her apartment under the pretext of discussing the position further and raped her there. He was later convicted and sentenced to two years and ten months.
Austria’s new nationwide ban on “traditional Muslim” head coverings, including hijabs and burqas, for girls under 14 in both public and private schools, has now taken effect as of Sept. 7, 2026. in Vienna, Lower Austria, and Burgenland. The start date coincided with the start of the new school year. Austria’s remaining states will follow with a ban next week as well.
The measure, framed by the government as a child-protection and gender-equality policy, immediately faced visible resistance from Muslims and the first formal legal challenge.
At an Islamic primary school in Vienna, reporters from Austrian news outlet Heute observed young girls arriving to school still wearing headscarves accompanied by their mothers. One child wore a pink hijab coordinated with her dress; two slightly older students entered in simple hijabs without parents. School officials did not immediately clarify how they would apply the ban on private Islamic institutions.
The law requires schools to start with conversations involving the student and her legal guardians. Repeated violations trigger involvement of child-protection services, with fines of €150 to €800 possible for parents as a last resort. Teachers, already under strain, must initiate these talks. There are now fears of real conflict arising in the coming months.
Integration Minister Claudia Bauer of the conservative ÖVP described the headscarf as “a sign of oppression and a means of controlling girls from the earliest childhood.” Chancellor Christian Stocker has separately called for a constitutional ban on political Islam, saying he does not “want to live in an Islamic state.”
The right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the most popular party in the country is known for its even harsher stance toward migrants and Islam in the country. FPÖ politician Ricarda Berger stated there is “no place for political Islam in Austria, and certainly not in our schools.”
The party wants a general ban on all headscarves and face coverings in schools for both students and teachers alike, which would cover all ages.
Education Minister Christoph Wiederkehr of the liberal NEOS acknowledged uncertainty about the law’s fate at the Constitutional Court, stating: “You can never be completely certain.”
He added that the government and education ministry “carried out very intensive consultations” to draft a constitutionally compliant text.
Only the Greens opposed the bill in parliament. Green politician Sigi Maurer accused Wiederkehr of “creating new conflicts and offloading them onto the teachers,” saying the minister wanted to “foist the role of police officers onto them.”
Teachers’ union chairman Paul Kimberger noted that some communities had already announced they would resist and that certain conversations with parents “will probably have limited success.”
The Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGÖ), the largest Islamic organization in the country, condemned the ban as discriminatory. Spokesperson Carla Amina Baghajati said, “We believe it unjustifiably restricts the fundamental right to freedom of religion and disproportionately affects Muslim girls. Rather than protecting children, it singles out a specific religious practice and risks excluding the very children it claims to support.”
The IGGÖ has pledged to support families challenging the law at the Constitutional Court. A request for annulment was filed on the first day of school.
A 2020 Constitutional Court ruling had struck down an earlier ban limited to children under 10, finding it violated Austria’s duty of religious neutrality. The court dismissed premature challenges to the new law in July because it had not yet entered force, but that procedural barrier is now gone. Left-wing student groups have called for protests. An 11-year-old girl demonstrated against the ban in February carrying a banner that, translated into English, read, “My headscarf, my decision.”
The Constitutional Court is likely to have the final word on the issue.
Non-German suspects account for nearly half of all violent crime in the German state of Bavaria, with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party now calling for remigration for all criminal migrant suspects.
The Interior Ministry data was released in response to a request from AfD state parliament member Martin Böhm. It revealed that police recorded 20,367 suspects in violent offenses in 2025 and about 47 percent did not have German citizenship.
Remarkably, foreigners are responsible for this massive amount of serious crime despite making up only 15.5 percent of Bavaria’s population.
Syrians were the largest group of non-German suspects, at 1,284, followed by Turks with 799, Ukrainians with 797, Afghans with 784, Romanians with 687, Iraqis with 428, Bulgarians with 350, Poles with 328, Kosovars with 319, and Italians with 250.
A different ranking appears when the figures are adjusted for population. The suspect burden figure, or TVBZ, measures how many suspects police identified per 100,000 people in a group over one year.
Ukrainians had the highest TVBZ, at 555. Turks followed at 445 and Romanians at 435. The figure for German citizens was 106. That means Ukrainians, for instance, are more than five times more likely to commit a violent crime than Germans.
The government did not calculate a TVBZ for other nationalities because each had fewer than 100,000 residents.
“For smaller population groups, the crime rate would have to be mathematically extrapolated to 100,000 people,” the state government wrote. “However, since the relationship between population size and crime burden is not strictly linear, an error would occur in the TVBZ calculation, which is greater the smaller the population group. For this reason, the TVBZ are only calculated for non-German citizens who have a population share of over 100,000 people.”
When it comes to murder and manslaughter, there were 411 suspects in Bavaria and 177 were non-Germans, equaling 43.1 percent of all murder and manslaughter suspects. The TVBZ for Germans was 87, while Turks had a TVBZ of 478 and Ukrainians with a TVBZ of 499.
In cases of rape, sexual assault and sexual assault in particularly serious cases, including those resulting in death, police registered 1,288 suspects in Bavaria. Of those, 551 were foreigners, equaling 42.8 percent.
It must also be noted that for all German suspects counted in this data, the Interior Ministry does not release if they have a foreign background.
Böhm said the figures show that violent crime in Bavaria is an imported problem to a “far too high” extent.
“No amount of sugarcoating or trivialization will help. The numbers speak for themselves,” he told Junge Freiheit, which exclusively received the figures.
“The AfD therefore demands: decisive action by the judiciary, an end to mass naturalizations and rigorous remigration of foreign violent criminals,” Böhm said.
The mother of a disabled woman is outraged after a rape complaint was dismissed against 40-year-old Moroccan man serving as the daughter’s caregiver in a care facility near the French city of Toulouse. In addition, prosecutors dismissed the sexual assault allegations involving two other disabled female victims at the same facility.
The mother, Nathalie Muet, is openly publicizing a case in where she says her 23-year-old quadriplegic daughter, Mayline, was raped at an Association for the Protection of Disabled Children (ASEI) center in Ramonville-Saint-Agne.
Speaking to French newspaper La Dépêche, she called the decision “incomprehensible.”
The rape complaint was first filed on Mayline’s behalf in July 2025 and was dismissed on Aug. 1. Muet is now speaking up about the dismissal and exploring different legal options, including an appeal, after prosecutors dropped the case.
Within 24 hours, Noelia Castillo Ramos will be euthanized in Spain.
In 2022, Noelia suffered a gang rape in a supervised care center.
This completely shattered her life. She attempted suicide, jumping from a 5-story building, which left her a paraplegic.
The mother points to what she says is clear evidence that requires a criminal trial. In fact, Mayline is not the only woman who has filed a criminal complaint. The Moroccan was indicted in a total of three cases involving the sexual assault of young women, including Mayline.
One of the key pieces of evidence the mother cites is the medical report. The report notes the absence of traumatic injuries, while specifying that the genital examination was incomplete and that “the hymen could not be visualized.” However, the medical expert considered the exam “compatible with acts of anal penetration,” as reported by the mother.
However, there is additional evidence, according to the mother. She says Mayline herself was terrified to go back to the facility due to the rape.
“She was screaming and didn’t want to go back to that center again,” Nathalie Muet said to French newspaper Midi Libre, adding that she gathered information from her daughter, despite Mayline’s significant communication difficulties, about what she allegedly suffered.
The mother stated that it was not just one incident either, but that Mayline was the victim of “repeated” sexual touching by the caregiver.
The accused man was dismissed from his post and placed in pre-trial detention. He was released at the end of 2025 and denies any accusation of rape. In Mayline’s case, as in two other similar cases, the Toulouse public prosecutor’s office concluded after more than a year of proceedings that the offenses were not sufficiently constituted.
For Nathalie Muet, the medical report’s conclusions justify further investigation.
“There is still evidence to be found and educators who may not have said everything,” she said.
Mayline left ASEI in 2025 for another specialized care facility in Gratentour.
The European Commission calls it the Affordable Housing Act and says it can “truly bring a change in people’s lives”. But how much will it actually do to make housing more affordable, asks Catherine Feore?
The tension at the heart of the proposal is that Brussels is making ambitious claims about tackling the housing crisis while simultaneously making clear that it is not imposing new housing policies on governments or cities.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the measure fulfils a promise to tackle housing affordability, describing it as “one step in this direction” and declaring: “Today, we are delivering for all Europeans.” Housing Commissioner Dan Jørgensen went further, saying the Act gives governments and cities tools to “make more affordable homes available”.
Yet the proposed legislation itself is considerably more cautious. The Commission acknowledges that insufficient housing supply is the structural cause of the affordability crisis. Short-term rentals, second homes and other non-primary uses are not the root problem, although they can exacerbate shortages and push up prices in already constrained markets.
Housing stress test
The Act principally delivers a common legal framework for authorities that choose to intervene.
Central to this is a new EU test for housing stress. An area would normally qualify where an average home costs at least eight years of disposable per-capita income, that ratio has increased over the previous decade, and pressures are unlikely to ease over the next three years. At a ratio of ten or more, the historical deterioration test is dropped. Population dynamics, housing supply and demand must also be assessed.
Authorities could then restrict short-term rentals outside a host’s primary residence or tackle second homes, prolonged vacancy and certain other non-primary uses. But there is no obligation. They must also demonstrate that the activity has significantly harmed housing affordability or availability for at least three years, and any restriction must be targeted, necessary and proportionate. This seems to set a high bar of evidence for most local authorities.
Currently, local authorities must notify the Commission of short-term rental restrictions under the Services Directive. That notification requirement will no longer be required. Cities can use the new framework without seeking prior Commission approval, although measures must be published and remain open to legal challenge. Officials argue this will remove a burdensome procedure and make intervention easier.
But the Commission is equally explicit about what it is not doing. The Act does not regulate rents, harmonise housing policy, give Brussels new housing competences, dictate taxation, inheritance or planning, or require, recommend or encourage authorities to impose restrictions. Housing policy choices “remain national, regional and local”.
Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera says that when markets fail to provide affordable homes, “public authorities have a responsibility to act”. But the Act does not compel that action; it provides a stronger legal framework if authorities choose to act independently.
Its impact could be real in tourist hotspots where non-primary housing use is demonstrably worsening shortages. But it cannot itself build a home or lower a rent. The question is whether a clearer legal toolbox matches the expectations created by the Commission’s promise to tackle Europe’s housing crisis. When asked to quantify how much of a difference the new provisions could make, the Commission couldn’t give precise figures, saying that it would depend on the measures adopted.
Under the conditions of power monopoly in Afghanistan, the proposal of ideas such as ‘Southern Turkestan’ can become a platform for foreign intervention, ethnic polarization, and further disintegration of national cohesion. This project could also serve as a tool for future pressure on Iran, Russia, and China. Introduction The introduction of the ‘Southern Turkestan’ idea […]
After a group of migrant men were filmed parading around with a dead baby bottlenose dolphin in Ceuta, a polarized public debate has erupted and an environmental organization is pushing for Spanish prosecutors to investigate the case as a criminal offense.
On Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, videos recorded at Trampolín beach showed several people holding a dead baby bottlenose dolphin up as if it were a trophy. It was bleeding above one of its eyes. A Spanish influencer recorded the entire incident, saying they killed the dolphin.
“They killed a dolphin…. They say they killed it. Over there, as you can see, they kill protected species,” said the influencer.
JUST IN: "They killed a dolphin. They say they killed it. Over there, as you can see, they kill protected species."
Some leftists across X and other platforms are claiming these migrants are "allowed to fish."
The calf had been swimming close to shore in an area that has functioned for weeks as an informal settlement for the migrants who arrived in late July. Local reporting and an environmental group say the animal was taken from the water and later appeared dead or dying.
The Ceuta-based association Defense of Urban Trees, Biodiversity, and the Environment (DAUBMA) filed a complaint with the Civil Guard the following day. In its statement, the group said the calf arrived near shore alive and disoriented, was forcibly removed from the sea, and was struck on the head with a stick.
5 migrants tried to gang rape a 12-year-old girl as she screamed for help, said locals in Ceuta who stopped the attack.
"There were five against a 12-year-old girl. She was a little girl, they were taking off her pants. She was screaming, screaming, screaming. She was… pic.twitter.com/g97pj8phUR
DAUBMA submitted photographs and videos that, it said, show a bleeding wound near one eye and people attempting to wipe blood from the animal. The association asked for those visible in the footage to be identified, for an investigation to be opened, and for the case to be sent to Spain’s Environmental Prosecutor’s Office.
The association argued the events could constitute both animal cruelty resulting in death and an offense against a protected species.
BREAKING: A Moroccan migrant wearing only his underwear snuck into a sleeping Spanish woman's bed early in the morning in Ceuta.
"I live in the center on the fifth floor, mind you… He jumped onto my bedroom balcony. He came into my bedroom and got into my bed. I thought… pic.twitter.com/8cs7rasXSv
A beach-cleaning worker from the company Ecoservicios who was present told the group on the beach that they could not treat the animal as a catch and that environmental specialists should be called. After that intervention, the group tried to return the calf to the water. Some accounts say it already appeared lifeless.
Bottlenose dolphins are strictly protected under EU and Spanish law. Intentional capture, harm or killing of cetaceans is prohibited. Recreational fishing licenses issued in Ceuta cover only specified fish and cephalopods; dolphins are not among them. The incident therefore cannot be treated as a case of ordinary and legal fishing.
As of Sept. 4, no official results from an examination of the body, nor any arrests, had been made public.
A Change.org petition calling for identification of those involved also circulated quickly, according to El Faro Ceuta. The beach itself remains crowded with people living in makeshift migrant camp conditions, adding to the tension that has marked Ceuta since the July crossings. DAUBMA and the local marine-conservation group CECAM have used the episode to repeat earlier complaints about repeated case of mutilated dolphins and turtles stranded on the beach which they attribute in part to illegal drift nets. Those earlier cases are separate from Wednesday’s events but form the backdrop against which the association is now pressing authorities to treat this death as a criminal matter rather than an isolated disturbance.
The Civil Guard has the complaint, video evidence, and witness reports. It remains unclear whether an animal-cruelty or wildlife-protection case will be opened.
In the meantime, pressure is growing on the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, with mass protests involving tens of thousands of Spaniards taking place in cities across the country over the weekend.
A 24-year-old man from the African country of Benin is being held in pretrial detention on suspicion of dragging a 27-year-old woman off a sidewalk and raping her in a bush in a small Mecklenburg–Western Pomeranian town. The police are now only reporting the incident four weeks after the initial assault.
Notably, the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has the lowest number of refugees of any German state and, in per capita terms, is the third-lowest.
Police and prosecutors say the attack happened about 2:30 p.m. on Aug. 9, a Sunday, on Mühlenstrasse in Friedland, a town of about 6,000 people in the Mecklenburg Lake District. According to an initial account, the suspect pulled the German woman from the street into bushes beside a building and raped her there. The woman was later found injured.
A detailed description of the attacker quickly pointed investigators toward a specific suspect, the regional newspaper Nordkurier and public broadcaster NDR reported. Neubrandenburg criminal police detained the man in Friedland the following evening, Aug. 10. A local court later ordered him held in pretrial detention at the request of the Neubrandenburg prosecutor’s office.
Authorities did not publicly describe the case when the woman was first raped. Asked later by Nordkurier, investigators said they withheld an appeal for witnesses so they would not compromise the search or an imminent arrest.
A police spokeswoman also told Bild: “In order not to jeopardize a possible arrest, no public appeal for witnesses was issued.”
Interviews and forensic work in the hours after the report strengthened suspicion against the Beninese national, authorities said. T-Online reported that investigators believe the 24-year-old did not try to leave town because he did not think he would be identified.
Police said the suspect had previously been in the neighboring Vorpommern-Greifswald district. He had been seen several times in Friedland and around a communal shelter there, although he did not live at the facility. Why he kept returning is still under investigation.
His asylum application in Germany was rejected. He has challenged that decision in court, and because those proceedings are pending, he was legally allowed to remain in the country at the time of his arrest, police said. A final ruling on asylum or possible deportation would come only after that case is finished.
Police have declined to give a fuller account of the assault, citing victim protection. The rape investigation continues.
Italian police are investigating an alleged attempted sexual assault involving a French volleyball player and a Moroccan footballer during the Mediterranean Games in Taranto, Italy.
The incident is reported to have taken place on the night of Aug. 30–31 aboard the cruise ship serving as the athletes’ village. According to an initial reconstruction, the French athlete rejected a sexual approach by the alleged attacker, who would not stop and kept insisting. She began calling for help, which helped draw the attention of onboard staff. Emergency doctors from 118 and police officers responded at the scene.
The athlete was taken to hospital for checks and did not suffer any injuries. After the medical examination, she returned to the athletes’ village.
Investigators have identified the alleged attacker as a Moroccan footballer. He had already returned to Morocco with his national delegation after completing his tournament commitments. Authorities said there were no grounds for a precautionary measure or police arrest, and he was allowed to board the long-scheduled return flight with his group.
An Italian police squad, led by director Antonio Serpico, is interviewing witnesses and reviewing footage from the ship’s internal cameras, particularly those installed near the pool area. Officials say they have already gathered information that may help reconstruct what happened that night. The footballer’s departure has not halted the investigation, according to Italian newspaper La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno.
Mediterranean Games general director Carlo Molfetta said: “We are closely monitoring the development of investigations by the competent authorities to determine any responsibility for what happened. The investigations are using images from the cameras present on the village ship, which number as many as 1,200. For our part, I can only reiterate my full cooperation with the investigators’ work.”
No formal action has been taken against the identified athlete at this stage. Investigators say they are continuing to examine the circumstances and verify the French athlete’s account.
Just months after opening as a centerpiece for the waterfront revival of Hamburg-Harburg’s Inner Harbor, the trendy design hotel “The Niu Quay” is closing its doors to commercial guests. Hamburg municipal authorities have agreed to lease the property to accommodate approximately 340 incoming refugees, drawing sharp backlash from neighborhood representatives who point to the tens of millions in recent investments made to revitalize the district.
The decision comes directly on the heels of the city’s pledged commitment to dial back its reliance on expensive, short-term hotel leases for asylum seekers. The municipal housing agency, Fördern & Wohnen, signed an initial lease for 340 places at the hotel, running through the end of 2026.
While initial local reports suggested a multi-year takeover, the Social Affairs Authority clarified that the property will undergo a gradual phase-out beginning in January 2027, with the facility scheduled to fully return to standard hotel operations by mid-2027.
Local leaders and business advocates have reacted with frustration to the sudden shift in strategy.
Dirk Kannengiesser, chairman of the FDP parliamentary group Harburg, said, “Investors are investing millions, and restaurants and businesses are supposed to provide a boost. Then, in the short term, a key component of this concept is taken away from its actual function.”
Upward of €60 million in combined public and private capital was recently channeled into transforming the surrounding neighborhood, with the hotel meant to serve as an anchor for local commerce, dining, and tourism.
Opposition representatives voiced strong concern over the mixed signals sent by municipal leadership, questioning how the Senate can publicly commit to curbing hotel housing expenditures while simultaneously locking down a brand-new facility. Business owners in the district worry that removing a key commercial hub threatens the long-term economic momentum of the harbor’s revitalization plan.
According to municipal statistics, roughly 3,800 refugees currently reside across initial reception centers and state-run housing in Harburg. The area’s overall housing capacity is projected to shrink in the coming months as several major sites close down, including a large facility on Schlachthofstrasse this autumn, followed by additional location shutdowns next year.
“The Senate cannot announce the reduction of expensive hotel accommodation and at the same time completely tie up a newly opened hotel for years<‘ said Kannengiesser.
Since Hamburg’s public housing facilities are operating at a staggering 102.8 percent capacity, city officials maintain that temporary commercial leases remain an unavoidable safety valve. When large-scale centers close before replacement infrastructure becomes available, short-term options, including hotel rooms, are brought online to fill the void.
The financial terms of the lease have further fueled local controversy. While municipal negotiators state that they consistently push for below-market rates when securing temporary housing, reports indicate that the city may be paying premium pricing for the newly constructed rooms. The Social Affairs Authority declined to comment on specific contractual terms.
Figures from the prior year show that hotel housing in Hamburg averaged approximately €82 per person per day. While city authorities report that overall reliance on hotel placements is dropping, with about 1,000 hotel shelter slots set to be phased out over the course of the year.
As Remix News has previously reported, Hamburg spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer euros to house migrants in the city. Hamburg and Berlin combined spend €4 billion a year.
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Muslim students beat him because he was German and gay.
