BANGKOK: The dismembered body of a missing German businessman was found in a freezer inside a house in southern Thailand, police said Tuesday.
Tawee Kudthalaeng, the police chief in the town of Nong Prue, said the body of 62-year-old Hans-Peter Mack was discovered at about 11 p.m. Monday. Mack had been missing for a week.
Investigators located his body by using security camera videos from the area, Tawee said. He did not elaborate, but photos and video published by Thai media showed the freezer in the bed of a black truck with a man squatting next to it.
Mack was last seen driving his Mercedes sedan in Pattaya, a coastal city in southern Thailand, according to a missing person announcement distributed by his family that offered a reward of 3 million baht ($86,000) for information leading to his return.
Crowds gathered outside the gates of the house where his body was discovered and watched as forensic teams in white coveralls, hair nets and blue gloves pored over the scene.
Video broadcast on Thai PBS television showed experts inside the dwelling going through a garbage bag taken from a large white freezer. They pulled out a Makita cordless chainsaw and charging unit, a pair of yellow-handled hedge clippers and two large rolls of plastic.
The bag was taken out of the home, followed by a body covered with a plastic sheet on a stretcher and the freezer.
Mack lived in Pattaya with his Thai wife and worked as a real estate broker, according to local media reports. He had been a resident of Thailand for at least several years.
His Mercedes E350 was found Sunday in the parking lot of a condominium in Nong Prue, an upscale settlement popular with foreigners northeast of Pattaya in Chonburi province.
According to police, there were traces of what appeared to be a cleaning solvent on the seats, dashboard, steering wheel and other areas of the car.
Tawee said police determined that a large amount of money was missing from Mack’s bank account, which they suspect is linked to the slaying. The police chief refused to elaborate but said investigators were looking into several suspects, both German nationals and Thai.
The German Embassy in Bangkok referred all queries to the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin, which said it was aware of the case of a missing German citizen and that officials were in contact with the man’s relatives and Thai authorities. It said it could not give further details for privacy reasons.
The telephone number listed on the missing person poster went unanswered Tuesday.
German businessman’s dismembered body found in freezer in Thailand
https://arab.news/2nx8g
German businessman’s dismembered body found in freezer in Thailand
- Tawee Kudthalaeng, the police chief in the town of Nong Prue, said the body of 62-year-old Hans-Peter Mack was discovered at about 11 p.m. Monday
- Photos and video published by Thai media showed the freezer in the bed of a black truck with a man squatting
Afghan man goes on trial over deadly Munich car-ramming
- The suspect, partially identified as Farhad N., 25, remained silent and did not offer a statement at the opening of the trial
- He faces two charges of murder and 44 of attempted murder
MUNICH: An Afghan man went on trial in Germany on Friday accused of ramming a car into a crowd in Munich last year, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother and injuring dozens.
The suspect, partially identified as Farhad N., 25, remained silent and did not offer a statement at the opening of the trial, sitting in the dock wearing a green fur-lined hooded jacket.
He faces two charges of murder and 44 of attempted murder, with prosecutors saying he acted out of a “religious motivation” and expected to die in the attack.
The vehicle rampage in February 2025 was one of several deadly attacks linked to migrants which inflamed a heated debate on immigration ahead of a general election that month.
Farhad N. is accused of deliberately steering his car into a 1,400-strong trade union street rally in Munich on February 13.
The vehicle came to a halt after 23 meters (75 feet) “because its front wheels lost contact with the ground due to people lying in front of and underneath the car,” according to the charge sheet.
A 37-year-old woman and her young daughter were both hurled through the air for 10 meters and sustained severe head injuries, of which they died several days later.
Prosecutors have said Kabul-born Farhad N. “committed the act out of excessive religious motivation,” and that he had uttered the words “Allahu Akbar,” meaning “God is the greatest,” after the car rampage.
“He believed he was obliged to attack and kill randomly selected people in Germany in response to the suffering of Muslims in Islamic countries,” they said when he was charged in August.
However, he is not believed to have been part of any Islamist militant movement such as the Daesh group.
Farhad N. was examined by a psychiatrist after exhibiting “certain unusual behaviors” during pretrial detention, including a tic in which he sometimes twitches his head, a court spokesman said on Friday.
The preliminary psychiatric report concluded that he is criminally responsible, but the presiding judge has said that the issue could be considered during the proceedings, according to the spokesman.
The trial is scheduled to run for 38 days until the end of June.
- Spate of attacks -
Farhad N. arrived in Germany in 2016 as an unaccompanied teenager, having traveled overland at the height of the mass migrant influx to Europe.
His asylum request was rejected but he was spared deportation, found work with a series of jobs and was able to remain in the country.
Police said Farhad N. worked in security and was heavily engaged in fitness training and bodybuilding.
The Munich attack came a month after another Afghan man had carried out a knife attack on a kindergarten group that killed two people, including a two-year-old boy, in the city of Aschaffenburg.
The perpetrator was later confined to a psychiatric facility after judges found he had acted during an acute psychotic episode.
In December 2024, six people were killed and hundreds wounded when a car plowed into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg. A Saudi man was arrested and is currently on trial.
Several Syrian nationals were also arrested over attacks or plots at around the same time, including a stabbing spree that killed three people at a street festival in the city of Solingen.
Germany took in more than a million asylum seekers in 2015-2016 — an influx that has proved deeply divisive and helped fuel the rise of the far-right AfD.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who took power last May, has vowed to crack down on criminal migrants and has ramped up deportations of convicts to Afghanistan.
Germany in December also deported a man to Syria for the first time since that country’s civil war broke out in 2011.
