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Elderly German woman kidnapped from tour in Mali

A German woman has been kidnapped along with a Swiss couple and a British man in Mali, the website of newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported late on Thursday.

Published: 23 January 2009 08:24 CET

Elderly German woman kidnapped from tour in Mali

A file photo of a tour bus in Mali. Photo: DPA

Two cars were highjacked in the border region between Mali and Niger midday on Thursday, probably by nomadic Tuareg people who may have fled with one of the cars and its passengers into the desert, security forces in the region told the magazine. Shots were fired but no one was injured.

“The Foreign Ministry and the embassy in Bamako believe that a German citizen has been missing since midday in Mali and they are trying to quickly clarify the situation,” a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry told news agency DDP.

The woman was on a guided tourist trip and is believed to be 75-years-old and from the German state of Hesse, Der Spiegel reported.

The other car on the tour has since been secured.

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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