<p>BERLIN — A 39-year-old German man has been arrested in connection with a racist attack on a teenage refugee in the eastern city of Erfurt that was captured on video, officials said Monday.</p>
<p>The governor of Thuringia state, where Erfurt is located, called the attack that took place late Friday in one of the city’s trams “simply disgusting.”</p>
<p>“The perpetrator has been caught,” the governor, Bodo Ramelow, wrote on Twitter. “Such a cowardly person, strong and aggressive against someone who was defenseless.”</p>
<p>A video circulating on social media shows a man standing over the seated victim, repeatedly insulting and spitting at him, and then kicking him in the face.</p>
<p>Erfurt police said the 17-year-old victim from Syria, suffered minor injuries in the attack, which followed a verbal argument.</p>
<p>Witnesses on the tram alerted officers, who were able to identify the suspect based on the video as he was already known to police.</p>
<p>Anti-racism groups say there were 102 cases of far-right and antisemitic violence in Thuringia last year.</p>
<p>The incident happened in the same week that a Black customer was ejected from a Berlin supermarket <a href="https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-business-prince-europe-berlin-29b3c32b35886bdd09f29f1e1de72a45">after complaining about another shopper’s racist slur</a>. Supermarket chain Aldi apologized for the incident and said a member of staff was fired.</p>
