Climate protester left with block of tarmac stuck to his hand is jailed

A German climate activist who was left with a chunk of tarmac stuck to his hand after glueing himself to the street has been jailed for three days.

Raul Semmler, a 38-year-old former soap opera actor, used a combination of sand and superglue to bind himself to the street in Mainz last year.

The combination proved to be so effective that police were unable to free his hand with a normal solvent and instead had to use a jackhammer to cut around his fingers, leaving him with a chunk of tarmac stuck to his hand.

At the time he said: “Of course it was scary when the police turned up with a big angle grinder to cut up the asphalt, but I honestly am more scared that we don’t have a secure future.”

Then, at a protest in Hamburg in March, Semmler had to be cut from the street with heavy machinery again, after he and three other activists used cement to stick their hands to the asphalt.

A member of the climate activist group Letzte Generation, Semmler has been arrested at street blockades on at least 100 occasions, according to German daily Bild.

Semmler was sentenced by a court in the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Tuesday.

On top of his three-day sentence for the glue protest, Semmler will serve extra time in prison because of his inability to pay the enormous fines that he has accumulated for his repeated law-breaking.

The Letzte Generation group confirmed that more jail time was to follow for the actor, saying: “Because he courageously stood up for our livelihoods, he is now expected to spend a total of over three weeks in jail.”

‘Totally crazy’

Before turning to full-time climate activism, Semmler had a successful career as an actor on German television where he starred in evening crime dramas such as the East German series Polizeiruf.

After his sentencing on Tuesday, Semmler reportedly described the ruling as “totally crazy”, a reference to a comment made by Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, who recently used the same remark to describe the activists’ street blockades in a conversation with schoolchildren.

Mr Scholz’s dismissal of their protests led to a furious reaction from the Letzte Generation, which accused the chancellor of “destroying” children’s future.

German police conducted nationwide raids against the group last week over the suspicion that they had formed a criminal organisation.

Prosecutors say that the group had collected donations for the express purpose of financing crime, while members have also planned to sabotage oil pipelines.