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Shot rapper reproaches police

A rapper who was shot in the Berlin district of Neukölln in mid-January has accused the police of sloppy work. He said that the police arrived late and let two suspects get away.

Published: 6 February 2008 16:31 CET

The rapper ‘Massiv’ has also responded to accusations that he instigated the shootings as a marketing ploy. He made his comments on a five minute Youtube video.

“Miserable work” was how the rapper described the police response to the shootings. Haydar, another rapper who was with Massiv at the scene of the crime said that he had to call the police two or three times, “until they finally arrived at the crime scene after 15 minutes.”

“The first call was received by us at 22:13. Our colleagues were at the scene at exactly 22:17 and 43 seconds,” police spokesperson Bernhard Schodrowski told the Berliner Morgenpost.

Massiv also criticized the police for their handling of suspects after the arrest, by saying “Is it normal to let them go after one or two hours? I absolutely cannot explain that.”

“There was no immediate suspicion against those persons,” Schodrowski told Berliner Morgenpost in response to the rapper’s criticism of how police handled the suspects.

“It is absurd how people are reacting (to the shooting) by depicting me as an actor,” Massiv said in response to those who have claimed that the shootings were a PR gag.

Massiv’s new album is yet to enter the top 100.

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

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