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Father of starved toddler refuses to talk

The father of a three-year-old girl who died of starvation in Bavaria this week has refused to talk with the authorities and remained silent before a judge on Wednesday, as he was accused of negligent manslaughter.

Published: 12 August 2009 14:37 CEST

Father of starved toddler refuses to talk

A photo of the family home. Photo: DPA

His daughter was rushed to the hospital on Saturday after he and his wife called emergency services, but her heart stopped on Monday. An autopsy showed that she had starved to death, weighing “significantly less” than a normal child of her age, the authorities said.

The family was already known to youth services in the small town of Thalmässing. Officials visited them last autumn, reporting that the home was in a ramshackle state.

The girl’s 26-year-old mother is currently hospitalised and guarded by police after an emergency operation. She has not yet been questioned and police speculated she will be well enough for interrogation in the next two days.

Grandparents are caring for the girl’s four-year-old brother, who remains in good health, police said.

According to news magazine Der Spiegel, the mother had two other children who currently live in foster homes.

In a similar case, a Chemnitz judge sentenced a 25-year-old mother to eight years in prison on Wednesday on manslaughter charges for leaving her two-year-old son home alone in Kirchberg for three days over Christmas 2007. He also died of starvation.

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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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