British race-hate victim revisits scene of attack

A British victim of a neo-Nazi attack five years ago has returned to the scene of the crime to join a protest against a wave of violence that shows no sign of abating.

Noel Martin, 42, was working as a plasterer on a construction site in Mahlow, just south of Berlin, when neo-Nazis hurled a paving stone at his car.

Martin, targeted because he is black, swerved off the road and collided with a tree. The crash left him partly paralysed and confined to wheelchair.

Two other Britons escaped with minor injuries.

"Racism is a cancer in this country," he told about demonstrators after accompanying about about 2,500 marchers along part of a route.

"The people have to see themselves as the surgeons to remove it."

Mr Martin's attackers, two young men from Mahlow, were jailed for five and eight years, sentences criticised by some politicians and anti-racism campaigners as too lenient. One of those convicted has already been released for good behaviour.

"It's time neo-Nazis paid for their crime," said Mr Martin, who was due to attend a church service and meet youths in schools in the area to discuss tolerance and far-right extremism.

The German Government is trying to ban a far-right political party it blames for stoking the racism behind many attacks.

Police arrested about 100 left-wing demonstrators as they tried to disrupt a march by about 50 supporters of the hard-right National Democratic Party.