Germany says killer clowns not funny

GERMANY: Authorities in Germany have warned that anyone dressing as a ‘‘killer clown’’ to frighten people risks a year in prison as the craze spreads.

Police arrested a man at the weekend after he terrified passengers by roaming a train wearing a clown mask and carrying a knife. A few days earlier a teen was injured after he was attacked with a baseball bat by a man dressed as a clown.

Authorities have called for prosecutors and police to take a hard line in response to the craze.

‘‘Anyone who wants to scare another person to death, as the saying goes, is not funny but a criminal,’’ Thomas Kutschaty, the justice minister in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, said.

Even if the victim was not physically harmed, dressing up as a clown to frighten someone constituted a ‘‘criminal threat’’, Kutschaty said. ‘‘And for this the unmasked clown can land up in jail for up to a year.’’

State authorities in Bavaria have announced similar curbs. ‘‘Such bad jokes can have serious consequences,’’ interior minister Joachim Herrmann said.

Herrmann described a case last Friday in which a clown terrified a 10-year-old boy in the street. ‘‘Suddenly someone rushed from a bush screaming, wearing a clown mask and swinging an axe,’’ he said.

Anyone publishing videos of such incidents could also expect a visit from the police, he said.

A man was arrested in the western state of Saarland after he terrorised passengers on a train wearing a clown mask and brandishing a knife.

A 19-year-old is recovering after he was attacked by a man dressed as a clown in the northern city of Rostock, and the same day a man dressed as a clown was seen wielding a chainsaw.