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06. 08. 09. - 13:00

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06. 08. 09. - 13:00

Amnesty demands investigation after teen shot dead by cops

By William Green

Amnesty International (AI) has demanded an investigation after a 14-year-old boy was shot dead by policemen yesterday (Weds) in Lower Austria.

The calls came as rumours spread that the dead boy had been shot in the back.

AI General Secretary Heinz Patzelt in Austria said, although Austrian policemen were not "trigger-happy", they needed more training to make split-second, life-or-death decisions. He added professional bodyguards received more training in a week than an Austrian policeman did in a month.

Patzelt called for greater and more intensive target practice for policemen and for adequate follow-up in cases involving fatal shootings rather than the "fig-leaves" that other such investigations often became.

Florian P., 14, was killed and a 16-year-old boy was left seriously wounded as police opened fire in a supermarket in Krems an der Donau after they responded to an alarm at a Merkur supermarket at Landersdorfer Straße 8 in Krems early yesterday morning.

Friedrich Kutschera, the head of the public-prosecutor’s office in Krems an der Donau, said exact details of the incident were still unclear but the two boys, who were from the town and "well-known" to local police, had had a screwdriver and a garden hoe with them and so had been armed in a "technical", if not a legal, sense.

He added he did not know if the policemen had been attacked by the two boys, who had hidden in a recess in front of the store’s meat-storage room, but the officers had had "sudden contact" with the two suspects in the totally-dark supermarket at 2:55 am and opened fire.

Kutschera said Florian P. had been shot in the upper chest and died an hour later at the Krems provincial clinic while the 16-year-old had been shot several times in the thigh and had been taken to the clinic for treatment.

The "Resistance for Peace" organisation has announced its activists will hold a vigil for the dead Krems boy between 9 am and 10 am tomorrow. They said they would carry a four-metre-high banner reading "Justice is Linked to Instructions – The Police Have a Charter to Kill."

Austrian Times

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