Identification

An Afghan asylum-seeker suspected of raping and killing a 19-year-old university student in Freiburg was also convicted of attempting to kill another woman in Greece but was released early from prison, Germany's top security official said Thursday.

The Supreme Administrative Court has ruled that fingerprint identification in hospitals is not valid.

The decision of the three-member court was taken on Tuesday and fingerprint identification is terminated until the final ruling, reported BGNES.

A man confessed on Nov. 17 to sending a bomb-laden package to his father's office, Doğan News Agency has reported. 

Previously, Ali Can Kurdaş had denied being the person in the Nov. 14 surveillance camera footage. 

The new system for fingerprint authentication has been introduced in all health facilities in Bulgaria as of November 1.

As of Tuesday, all hospitals operating with the National Health Insurance Fund (NZOK) will have to use the devices and register patients with them, if hospitals are to be paid for their activities at the end of each month.

Fingerprint identification in Bulgarian hospitals will be introduced by September 25 at the latest.

The new type of identification will not be applicable to children under the age of fourteen. Children exempt from fingerprint identification will enter hospitals with their personal identity number and the fingerprint of the person accompanying them.

Turkish authorities have begun the distribution of new biometric identity cards in the Central Anatolian province of K?r?kkale, which was selected as the pilot province for the program.

The new "smart" cards, which contain chips, will replace the old versions, which were bigger and contained no information beyond the basic facts printed on them.        

Turkey has passed a new law to introduce a new version of identity cards for its citizens, as part of steps toward becoming a European Union member state.

On Tuesday, the Montenegrin Interior Ministry signed a 2 million euro contract for an automated fingerprint identification system called  AFIS.

The AFIS system, originally developed by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for use in criminal cases, will compare nationally issued ID cards and fingerprints with the voters registry. AFIS will be operational within three months.

Police claimed significant progress on Sept. 2 towards finding the mastermind of Thailand's deadliest attack after an arrested man admitted being near the Aug. 17 shrine blast and fingerprints tied him to the room of a suspected bomber.

Around 60% of the calls to the 112 emergency phone number in 2014 were unjustified, according to Stoyan Gramatikov, head of the National System 112 Directorate at the Interior Ministry.

In a Wednesday interview for the Bulgarian National Television, Gramatikov claimed that the share of malicious calls was relatively small, at 0.12%.