German authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a 29-year-old man who is accused of holding a woman in a Berlin supermarket for more than 11 hours over the weekend.
The man was charged on Sunday with kidnapping for ransom, in conjunction with attempted aggravated robbery and grievous bodily harm.
The man allegedly took the female supermarket worker hostage and threatened her inside a shop in Berlin’s southern Marienfelde neighborhood on Friday evening shortly after 10pm local time. A spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office said he had held the woman at bay.
After negotiations failed to convince her to surrender, the special forces released the woman in a special operation involving a taser shortly after 9am the following morning.
The woman was taken to the hospital but was not injured, according to prosecutors.
The suspected hostage suffered minor injuries during the operation and was also taken to hospital before being taken into police custody, police said.
