Man held after Hamburg airport stand-off as security to be overhauled

Flights at Hamburg's airport returned to normal schedule on Monday morning, hours after police managed to end a lengthy hostage stand-off with an armed man, who has now been placed in pre-trial detention.
The airport said security measures will be overhauled and physical barriers strengthened after the man managed to drive his car onto the tarmac on Sunday, forcing a halt to air traffic.
"We will implement further structural measures to strengthen possible access points to the security area," an airport spokeswoman said in Hamburg on Monday.
She said that the airport's security team had already compared the airport's security measures with current requirements on Sunday in light of the incident and were in touch with "the relevant authorities."
The 35-year-old suspect, a Turkish national, is accused of taking hostages, kidnapping minors and offences under the Weapons Act, the public prosecutor's office said. Pre-trial detention was ordered due to the risk that he might abscond.
According to the investigation, the man had used a ruse to gain access to his ex-wife's flat in the nearby town of Stade on Saturday and forcibly abducted their 4-year-old daughter, who lived there, in a hire car.
The man is said to have threatened the 38-year-old woman, who had sole custody of their daughter, with a semi-automatic pistol and fired a shot into the air when she called for help.
The accused then reportedly drove to Hamburg Airport with the abducted child, broke through a barrier shortly after 8 pm and drove the car onto the tarmac, setting off a lengthy stand-off with German police.
According to the public prosecutor's office, he used the police emergency call to report that he had a bomb in his vehicle and was demanding that he and his daughter leave the country for Turkey. At the airport, the man fired three more shots from a pistol and threw two incendiary devices from the car.
He eventually handed over the girl and surrendered to police on Sunday evening after 18 hours. No one was physically injured in the incident.
A home-made dummy explosive belt was recovered in addition to the firearm, the public prosecutor's office said. It was a book wrapped in aluminium foil with wires inserted into it.
Police on Monday declined to say where the mother and child are currently and how the 4-year-old girl is doing for reasons of privacy.
Child welfare authorities in Stade said on Monday that the family was previously known to them but declined to provide further details for "reasons of social data protection and out of consideration for the welfare of the child," an official spokesman said.
The hostage-taker had already been sentenced in spring 2023 to a fine of €3,600 ($3,860) for kidnapping minors, said Kai Thomas Breas, spokesman for the Stade public prosecutor's office.
The Turkish man had taken the girl to his home country in March 2022. The mother filed a complaint but then initially tried to settle the matter by other means. The proceedings were therefore initially discontinued.
On September 2, 2022, the woman then filed another complaint, said the spokesman. In July, the family court of the Stade district court had withdrawn parental custody from the father and transferred custody to the mother alone. The woman picked up her daughter from Turkey on September 17 and brought her back to Germany.
Numerous politicians have called for clarification and even stronger security measures - especially as this is not the first incident at the airport in the northern port city.
It was only in July that climate activists from the Last Generation group paralysed the airport for hours after cutting a hole in the fence and forcing their way onto the airfield.
The central German government in Berlin is now also calling for the incident to be investigated by the local authorities. In principle, German airports are very safe, said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit.