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Seven-year-old found in forest was murdered

A seven-year-old girl from Thuringia, whose body was found Saturday morning, was murdered, police said on Sunday. Police are looking for her red school bag in the search for clues.

Published: 26 June 2011 11:35 CEST

Seven-year-old found in forest was murdered

photo: DPA

The autopsy carried out on the girl enabled investigators to “determine without a doubt that this was a homicide,” police spokesman Eberhard Wagner said.

Police did not release further information about the circumstances of the death due to the ongoing investigation.

Walkers came upon the still-clothed body of the girl in a forest creek near the town of Zella-Mehlis in southern Thuringia. The body’s location was about 1.5 kilometres from where the girl had lived with her mother.

The girl had been missing since Friday evening when she failed to return from school.

On Saturday evening, a vigil was held in the town in which some 700 people took part, police said.

DPA/DAPD/kdj

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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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