Alien nation

A lawyer who landed an out-of-this-world job defending people who have suffered at the hands of aliens has started his first major case.

Former industrial law specialist Jens Lorek announced last year he would defend those whose close encounters with outer space visitors left them physically and mentally shattered.

Now he has his first client - hotel chef Paul Hoffmann, 23, who claims he was kidnapped by aliens and has never been the same since.

… The chef closed his bank account, squatted in an empty property in Dresden and bathed nude - "as ordered by the aliens" - in a municipal fountain. When police caught him naked on a bike, he was sent to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital.

Lorek thinks that police acted wrongly and is demanding his client's release. He has brought a lawsuit against the city in which he places the blame for his client's behaviour on "things unknown".

.."The state is socially responsible, even for alien shamans, if they cannot protect them from abduction.Aliens stick needles in their victims' genitals and interfere with their organs. Since 1961 there have been tens of thousands of alien abductions."

This story has everything: crazy yanks Germans, improbable law suits and aliens.

So can anyone finally explain this one to me: what is it about Americans and alien abduction?

Are there any parallels for this sort of mass national delusion? Voodoo in West Africa? Socialism in France? The belief that the national football team can win something in England?