Police chief fined for threatening kidnapper

A police chief who ordered an officer to threaten a suspect in a frantic attempt to find a German banker’s kidnapped son was fined today.

Former Frankfurt deputy police chief Wolfgang Daschner told a court in the German city that he had acted to save the kidnapped boy, who was eventually found murdered.

Daschner, who faced a maximum of five years in prison on the charge of inducing misuse of authority and coercion, was instead placed on probation and fined £7,500 (€10,913).

Daschner, 61, acknowledged that he ordered an officer questioning the suspect, Magnus Gaefgen, to threaten him with force after hours of questioning produced no information on the whereabouts of the boy.

After the threat, Gaefgen told officials where to find the body of 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler – leading them to a lake outside Frankfurt where he had bundled the child’s body into plastic bags and hidden it beneath a dock.

He later confessed to killing the boy whom he kidnapped on his way home from school in September 2002. He had demanded a £600,000 (€873,166) ransom from the boy’s family.