The taking of a four-year-old girl hostage on the tarmac at Hamburg airport has had a happy ending after more than 18 hours of war of nerves. The police arrested the armed hostage-taker, who had had his daughter in his power since Saturday, after much back and forth in the marathon negotiation.
The child remained unharmed. The suspect left the car with his daughter in his arms at 2:25 p.m., handed the girl over to special forces and allowed himself to be temporarily arrested without resistance, the police said.
Beginning and history of the hostage taking
This marked the end of a hostage situation that had begun on Saturday in Stade, Lower Saxony. According to the police’s initial findings, the 35-year-old man found himself in an exceptional psychological situation due to custody disputes with his 39-year-old ex-wife. This was preceded by an argument in which the Turkish citizen pushed the child’s mother aside and then fled with the four-year-old in the car towards Hamburg.
According to the police, he was already under investigation in Stade in March 2022 on suspicion of kidnapping minors. “At that time he had traveled to Turkey with his daughter without authorization. However, the child was later brought back to Germany by the mother,” the police said.
“Act of brute force” at the airport
The 35-year-old drove from Stade to Hamburg Airport. At the airport around 8 p.m. he broke through a barrier at the gate to the airport apron with his car, in which his daughter was also sitting. The airport explained that the man had “gained entry into a multi-secured area with an act of brute force.”
The car was driven through a safety barrier at high speed. “The driver did not take into account whether he could injure or endanger himself, his passenger or the staff at the security gate.”
According to police, he shot into the air on the premises and threw incendiary devices from the car. His car then sat next to a Turkish Airlines plane for more than 18 hours. The police tried for hours to end the hostage-taking without bloodshed – and were finally successful early on Sunday afternoon.
Thanks from the mayor and Senator for the Interior
“Many thanks to the Hamburg police for their commitment and the prudent approach that enabled the four-year-old girl to be freed and the perpetrator arrested,” said Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD). “I wish the mother, the child and their family a lot of strength to overcome the terrible experiences.”
During the nerve-wracking police operation, flight operations in the north were suspended and the airport was still closed late on Sunday afternoon. According to Interior Senator Andy Grote (SPD), it was “one of the longest and most challenging operations in recent history” for the Hamburg police. A total of around 920 officers from Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and the federal police were on duty.
The child’s mother is waiting at the airport
During the hour-long negotiations with the 35-year-old, the girl who was held hostage in the car appeared to be physically unharmed, according to police. The child could be heard in the background of the phone calls with the man, police spokeswoman Sandra Levgrün told the German Press Agency.
Negotiations had been going on all night long. It was spoken in Turkish, said Levgrün. According to the head of the DRK Hamburg’s crisis intervention team, Malte Stüben, the mother “of course wanted to get to her child as quickly as possible.” The woman was therefore in direct contact with the DRK at the airport. According to Stüben, a pediatrician was also there to look after the four-year-old girl after she was taken hostage.
Flight operations started again
After the end of the hostage-taking at Hamburg Airport, flight operations started again. “The airport has reopened,” an airport spokesman told the German Press Agency on Sunday. According to the website flightradar24.com, the first aircraft to land was a Eurowings plane from Hanover. According to the spokesman, further take-offs and landings should follow until the evening.
However, cancellations and disruptions to the process are still to be expected, said the spokesman. Passengers should check their flight status and contact the airline if necessary.
The airport in Hamburg is expecting largely normal operations on Monday. 152 takeoffs and 162 landings are planned. However, according to the information, it may occasionally happen that flights are canceled or delayed.
Thousands of people are affected
The airport was initially closed to a large area, but was reopened in the early evening. The number of flights canceled due to the hostage-taking at Hamburg airport had previously risen steadily. According to information from the airport on Sunday morning, 126 flights had already been canceled between the actual start of operations at 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. Five arrivals were redirected to other airports. There were actually 286 flights planned for the entire day – 139 departures and 147 arrivals – with around 34,500 passengers. Already on Saturday, 27 flights with around 3,200 passengers were affected.
Passengers describe fears
“Scary,” “creepy” – that’s how passengers who were taken out of their planes described their impressions. A young woman who wanted to fly to Mallorca told dpa that she saw a fire and at first thought it would be quickly put out. Then she heard there was a shooting spree, and that was scary. In fact, the armed man had thrown incendiary bottles as he drove through the airport, which started fires on the apron.
Numerous passengers spent the night in an airport hotel. “We ultimately accommodated 250 people here,” said Frank Kohlstädt, head of the DRK station at the airport. Around 200 people also received hotel rooms. People were more excited than psychologically stressed.
Security incidents before
Hamburg airport had already been closed in October, but at that time because of a threat of attack on a plane from Tehran to Hamburg. In July, climate activists from the group Last Generation shut down Hamburg airport for hours. At that time there were calls for security to be strengthened. Despite the hostage-taking, Hamburg Airport sees no failures in securing the area. “Securing the site complies with all legal requirements and largely exceeds them,” an airport spokeswoman told the dpa.
Criticism of security deficiencies at airports
Nevertheless, there was also criticism of the security standards at German airports. For the German Police Union (DPolG), for example, the current approach is no longer sufficient. “It is difficult to convey that Christmas markets, for example, are secured with concrete barricades, and our airports, as high-security areas, are neglected by operators,” says DPolG Federal Vice President Heiko Teggatz.
Aviation expert Heinrich Großbongardt said in “Spiegel”: “Hamburg airport is not safe – and neither are other airports in Germany.” Airports have been known as preferred targets for terrorists for decades. There are planes on the aprons with tens of thousands of liters of kerosene in their stomachs and hundreds of passengers on board.” Großbongardt therefore described the airport operators and authorities as “incredibly naive.”
