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12/07/2009

The Berlin police have, in recent years, become all-too-used to attacks on parked cars. It seems that a vehicle goes up in flames almost nightly in the German capital, often at the hands of left-wing radicals.

But the attack on early Saturday morning was not arson. Nor was the perpetrator a leftist. Instead, police found British rocker Pete Doherty on the scene -- and took him into custody for throwing his beer glass at a car and breaking out its back window.

The incident took place in front of a bar called Trinkteufel ("Drink Devil") in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg. The tabloid Bild is reporting a claim by a bartender that Doherty and two friends had been thrown out of another bar before they landed at the Trinkteufel at 6:50 a.m. on Saturday morning. "I almost threw them out too. He was drinking shots and constantly asking where to get cocaine," the unnamed bartender told Bild.

Doherty was taken to a police station not far from Checkpoint Charlie where he spent the next three hours. He was booked for property damage and released.

Doherty recently finished his solo tour of Germany -- a tour which was likewise tainted by scandal. In Munich at the end of November, he was booed heavily by concertgoers when he broke into the shunned first verse of the German national anthem, which begins "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles." The verse was jettisoned following World War II due to its association with the Nazis. Nowadays, only the third verse of the "Deutschlandlied" ("Germany Song") is sung.