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Pipe bombs hidden in kids’ playground

A five-year-old boy in Germany found two home-made pipe bombs at a playground but escaped unscathed, police said after arresting three men who admitted to planting the explosives.

Published: 21 June 2011 06:21 CEST

Pipe bombs hidden in kids' playground

Photo: DPA

The state police office in Bavaria, southern Germany, said in a statement that the boy and his father had discovered the pipes in a sandpit and under a bush at the playground in the town of Fürstenfeldbruck.

The father reported the find to the police, noting that he had heard a loud bang at the site the night before and saw three young men climbing into a car and driving away. He wrote down their number plate.

Explosives experts determined the pipes contained live bombs.

Using the number plate details, police tracked down the three men, aged 19 to 21, the statement said.

“All three confessed to having built the bombs themselves using power from leftover New Year’s Eve firecrackers,” it said.

“They were charged with violating explosives laws.”

AFP/mdm

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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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