Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - The police in North Rhine-Westphalia are currently looking for around 25,000 people with an arrest warrant. According to police data, there were a total of 24,615 outstanding arrest warrants in North Rhine-Westphalia as of July 7 of this year. This emerges from a response published on Wednesday by the Düsseldorf Ministry of Justice to a request from the AfD parliamentary group. Compared to the beginning of the year, the number has increased by 540.
According to this, 15,652 of the open arrest warrants have been stored in the search system for more than a year. 90 people who have escaped from open prisons in NRW since the beginning of 2020 are still on the run. A prisoner on remand who escaped from the closed prison was caught again within an hour.
When asked by the AfD how many people wanted by arrest warrant were abroad, the Ministry of Justice replied: "The whereabouts of wanted people are of course unknown."
Sometimes it is even appropriate not to execute an arrest warrant - for example, if the arrest is to be averted by making a payment or if the wanted person is abroad "and should only be arrested in case of re-entry".
