Three rightwingers beat up leftwing girl in east German town

Dec 22, 2007, 14:46 GMT

Berlin - A 19-year-old girl described as a political leftist needed hospital treatment after being attacked by two men and a woman in an eastern German town early Saturday, police reported.

A police spokesman said the men, aged 24 and 27, had held their victim while their woman accomplice, aged 21, hit her in the face, calling her a 'tick.'

The men subsequently kicked their victim, and one of them assaulted her sexually. The assailants, who are known to police as members of the right-wing political scene, were detained.

The young woman gave the Hitler salute while being taken to the local police station.

The incident occurred in an open area in the town of Halberstadt in the state of Saxony-Anhalt to the south-west of Berlin.

Police said the victim could be identified as a leftist from her clothing, and that her assailants were drunk at the time of the attack.

There has been a string of attacks by rightwingers in the state, where unemployment is high, most of them on people readily identifiable as foreigners.

Four youths, aged 22 to 29, are currently facing trial on charges of assaulting a theatre troupe that was putting on the popular musical, The Rocky Horror Show.

Five members of the troupe were hospitalized after the attack on June 9.

The police probe revealed the accused had targeted the actors because they considered them to be leftwingers.

At the beginning of December, a pregnant Iraqi woman, two African men and a police officer were injured in two separate racially motivated attacks in Magdeburg, the capital of the state which was part of formerly communist East Germany.