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Woman suspected of killing Swedish children rearrested

A 31-year-old German woman suspected of the murders of two young children in Arboga in central Sweden has been arrested for the second time by German police.

Published: 31 March 2008 10:42 CEST

The woman was taken into custody by police in Hanover on Sunday after a new warrant was put out for her arrest by police in Sweden.

Swedish police said they had found additional evidence linking her to the murder.

Last week it emerged that the woman had been caught on security camera at Arboga train station.

“We believe we have pictures of the woman taken at times we consider important to the case,” police spokesman Torbjörn Carlsson told Svenska Dagbladet on Sunday.

Police have not yet been able to speak to the 23-year-old mother of the two murdered children. The woman, who was seriously injured in the attack, awoke on Friday for the first time since the attempt on her life on March 17th.

Police are hoping that she will remember the identity of her assailant.

The 31-year-old suspect was first arrested in Hanover on Maundy Thursday but later released when police did not have enough evidence to warrant a detention.

The German woman was previously in a short relationship with the 23-year-old’s boyfriend.

TT/The Local

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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