Ex-employee suspected in restaurant massacre

15 February 2007

Sittensen, Germany (dpa) – An ex-employee has come under suspicion as German police pursue an inquiry into the grisly shooting deaths of seven people at a Chinese restaurant in the peaceful small town of Sittensen, the weekly magazine Stern said Wednesday.

The ethnic Chinese owners of the Lin Yue restaurant, Danny Wing Hong Fan, 36, who lived in Glasgow, Scotland most of his life, and his Berlin-born wife Annie, 28, were buried Wednesday in the German city of Hanover.

A cemetery spokesman said family requested the media and general public to leave them alone in their grief. The British Foreign Office has confirmed both were British citizens. Their 2-year-old daughter survived the attack unharmed.

Staff hailing from Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand were also slaughtered in the February 4 bloodbath. German police arrested two Vietnamese nationals the following day on suspicion of murder.

The website of the weekly magazine Stern said the latest suspect was a man who had been employed at the Lin Yue until about six months ago. His mobile-phone number was found on a piece of paper in the car used by the first two suspects.

Those men, picked up in a rental car on a country road, were carrying about 5,000 euros (6,500 dollars) in cash, the weekly said.

Police refused all comment.

“We are continuing this inquiry round the clock,” said Frank Federau, spokesman for the Lower Saxony criminal investigation department, declining to disclose any findings so far.

Stern said the two Vietnamese under arrest, aged 31 and 33, had alibis, having been in a gaming parlour in the city of Bremen, south-west of Sittensen, on the night of the crime. Federau declined comment on this.

“There is a compelling suspicion. Nothing has changed,” he said.

DPA

Subject: German news