Prince fined €443,200 for drunken assault
Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a cousin of the Queen of England, was fined €443,200 today for attacking a hotel owner in Kenya in a drunken rage.
A Hanover state court concluded that the German prince repeatedly hit Josef Brunlehner, owner of a hotel on Lamu Island, with a metal object in January 2000, causing “potentially life-threatening injuries”.
The court almost doubled an earlier fine imposed in 2001, which both prosecutors and the defence had appealed.
Brunlehner testified today that Ernst August, who is married to Princess Caroline of Monaco, punched him with a metal ring in the chest and abdomen, causing multiple bruises, and shouted abuse at him. The injuries required emergency-room treatment, Brunlehner testified.
The prince regrets the incident, but was not fully accountable because he had been drinking, his lawyer Jochen Heidemeier told the court.
Ernst August, 50, is a person “who flares up under the influence of alcohol and loses control of his actions”, and the prince “could not rule out” that someone handed him the object with which he hit Brunlehner, the lawyer said.
Prosecutors agreed with that argument, rejecting a demand by the hotel owner’s legal team to seek jail time for Ernst August.
The prince has had brushes with the law before. He was fined for attacking a German photographer in 1999 and had his driving licence suspended for a month last year for speeding on a French motorway.
In 2000, Ernst August caused an uproar after press photos showed him relieving himself outside the Turkish pavilion at the World’s Fair in Hanover.
