Schr÷der apologises for 'injustice'

Berlin - The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schr÷der, said the residents of an east German town suffered a "bitter injustice" …

Berlin - The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schr÷der, said the residents of an east German town suffered a "bitter injustice" after the German media wrongly accused them of harbouring neo-Nazis, Derek Scally reports.

Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild, reported last Noevember that a neo-Nazi gang beat, drugged and drowned a six-year-old boy at an open-air swimming pool in Sebnitz, southern Saxony, while town residents looked on.

The boy's mother and Iraqi-born father did not believe the official post-mortem verdict that her son drowned and told the newspaper she had found witnesses who said he was murdered by skinheads.

Last month, Bild retracted its story, saying it accepted the findings of a new investigation that confirmed the boy had drowned.