Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

CRIME

Police give all clear at Aachen clinic after hostage and bomb threat

Police gave the all-clear on Friday night after searching the Aachen University clinic for a man who threatened to take a child hostage and detonate a bomb if he was not given money.

Published: 24 June 2011 17:45 CEST
Updated: 24 June 2011 19:32 CEST

Police give all clear at Aachen clinic after hostage and bomb threat

Photo: wikipedia.org

Officers searched the enormous building for several hours after the man handed a note to the finance department of the clinic claiming to have a hostage, reportedly a child.

The note demanded money and threatened that an explosive device would be detonated if cash was not handed over.

Special police commandos were called to search the clinic’s 6,600 rooms but failed to find the man.

Initial fears that the clinic would have to be at least partially evacuated were not substantiated, although the complex was sealed off while the search was conducted.

“We haven’t found anyone,” a police spokeswoman said on Friday night.

The massive clinic building is one of the largest medical facilities in Europe. Besides caring for tens of thousands of patients each year, it houses the entire medicine department of the RWTH Aachen University.

DPA/hc

DAPD/DPA/The Local/mry

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

Url copied to clipboard!