Berlin's luxury car arsonists
Berlin anti-gentrification car-arsonists use slow-burning fuses to torch an average of one luxury car per day -- and they also hit police cars:German radicals turn to arson (via Beyond the Beyond)
THEY occur at a rate of nearly one a night, without warning or fanfare. By the time the police arrive, all that remains are smoking wrecks. Even the identifying badges -- Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, VW -- are often obliterated by fire...During the past six months, more than 170 cars have been destroyed by fire in Berlin and police confirm conservatively that 93 were politically motivated attacks.
A mysterious, single page website, brennende-autos.de (Burning Cars of Berlin), shows the number of cars set alight and where the crimes occurred, revealing clusters in ''richer'' areas, or in suburbs where gentrification and redevelopment are changing the demographic of local neighbourhoods...
Police cars, too, are being targeted. The favoured method is to use the slow-burn barbecue fire starters, which take time to smoulder and provide plenty of get-away time for the perpetrators.
''It is very difficult to get evidence. The fire can be started underneath a car but the person that did it can be many streets away when it is alight,'' Mr Millert said.
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