The politician had used force to hold the boy in order to hand him over to the police. According to a second teenager, he is said to have used a baseball bat to prevent the 14-year-old from escaping on a scooter. The young person was apparently injured, report the MDR and other media. Accordingly, he was treated in hospital for a minor concussion, bruises and injuries to his lip and gums.
Lying in wait to catch “anti-social young people” in the act
The Saxony-Anhalt State Criminal Police Office, which took over the investigation from the Stendal police station, confirmed the incident to the world and explained: "As a result, there was a possible physical altercation between a person subject to immunity and the young people. A suspected striking tool was said to have been used."
It has not yet been confirmed whether a baseball bat was actually used as a weapon. The identity of the politician involved was, however, easy to determine, even if the LKA limited itself to speaking of a “person subject to immunity”. It is obviously 43-year-old Arno Bausemer, who has been a member of the city council in Stendal for the AfD since 2019 and has been a member of the European Parliament since 2024.
Bausemer documented his actions against the rioters himself on Facebook: “Caught, arrested and handed over to the police!” he wrote there and published a photo that shows him holding a boy by the collar whose face is pixelated. He lay in wait with a party friend on Arneburger Strasse in Stendal after an AfD banner had been cut up there twice. The third time they “caught the anti-social young people in the act and after a short pursuit and resistance I was able to catch and hold one of the perpetrators.” Bausemer himself confirmed that things were not peaceful.
Strong criticism from the Greens
The LKA is now continuing to investigate the exact circumstances. As a police spokesman announced, it is possible to lift the immunity of the person concerned in order “to initiate criminal procedural measures against the person involved who currently has immunity,” if necessary.
Strong criticism of Bausemer has already come from the Greens in Saxony-Anhalt. Tobias Kremkau, chairman of the Altmark Green district association (including Stendal), told Die Welt: "Destroying election posters is not a trivial offense. But attacking young people with a baseball bat is not an appropriate reaction."
According to Spiegel, the state chairwoman of the Green Party in Saxony-Anhalt, Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz, has called for Bausemer's resignation, at least if what is in the room is confirmed. Violence should never become a means of political debate in a democracy. “Anyone who uses a baseball bat against a 14-year-old and risks dangerously injuring him is not suitable for political office and must immediately resign from his mandate,” said the party’s top candidate for the state elections at the beginning of September.
On Sunday it became known that Bausemer was stopped by the police during a traffic stop on Friday - one day after the altercation on Arneburger Strasse. At the request of the German Press Agency, the Stendal police station announced that an investigation had been initiated “on suspicion of a traffic offense”. Bausemer could have been drunk, as the dpa learned from security circles. The accused left the dpa's queries unanswered.
