A four-year-old girl, kidnapped and held hostage for 18-hours by her own father, has been freed. The stand-off, which caused chaos at Hamburg Airport, has ended with the arrest of a suspect and no casualties, say German authorities.
At about 8:00 PM on Saturday 4 November, a 35-year-old man drove a car containing his four-year-old daughter through security barriers at the airport, where he parked beneath a Turkish Airlines aircraft.
Police said the man, who was believed to be in possession of explosives, fired a weapon in the air twice and threw burning bottles from the car.
As well as endangering his own daughter, the man jeopardised a total of 286 flights serving around 34,500 passengers on the schedule for Hamburg on Sunday. His actions brought operations to a standstill, with flights grounded or diverted and would-be flyers told not to travel, as police, security forces, psychologists and hostage negotiators worked to release the little girl and get the airport, one of Germany’s busiest hubs, up and running again.
Security at the airport will now come under intense scrutiny as it is the second time in less than four months that intruders have managed to access the runway. The last time it was climate activists who caused the disruption.
This time, it’s understood the culprit chose to abduct his daughter and hold her hostage in response to a child “custody dispute”. Prior to the incident it’s understood the girl’s mother had alerted emergency services that her four-year-old had been taken.
Hamburg police spokeswoman Sandra Levgruen told press on Sunday that the man did not accept the courts’ decisions in relation to the custody arrangement and aimed to travel to Türkiye with the child.
He speaks about his life being a heap of shards.
Sandra Levgruen told German broadcaster ZDF.
In a post on the social media site X on Sunday afternoon, the city’s police force said: “The hostage situation is over. The suspect got out of the car with his daughter. The man was arrested by the emergency services without resistance. The child appears to be unharmed.”
However, acknowledging the potential psychological harm the incident could cause, Hamburg mayor Peter Tschentscher wrote on X: “I wish the mother, the child and her family a lot of strength to cope with this terrible experience.”
