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Somali pirates capture another German ship

Pirates attacked a German-owned cargo ship flying under a Maltese flag and captured its 17-strong crew overnight in the Gulf of Aden, officials said Saturday.

Published: 25 April 2009 13:22 CEST

Somali pirates capture another German ship

Photo: DPA

“A cereal carrier has been seized overnight (Friday to Saturday) in the eastern part of the Gulf of Aden,” said Andrew Mwangura, of the Kenya-based East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, “It seems that its 17 crew members are unhurt.”

The Maltese-flagged vessel, Patriot, was owned by a Germany company and was attacked 150 nautical miles from the Yemeni port of Al-Mukalla, a spokesman for Ve Flotte, Nathan Christensen said.

The nationality of the crew was not known.

Mwangura added that a Philippine-flagged chemical tanker recently freed by Somali pirates had been refuelled and was on its way to the Kenyan port of Mombasa or Djibouti.

The MT Stolt Strength and its 23-man Filipino crew had been stranded after its release on Tuesday, low on fuel and supplies.

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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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