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Pipe bomb hurts man at Berlin park

Police are on the hunt for the person who planted a pipe bomb at a Berlin park over the weekend. The device exploded and injured a man.

Published: 15 August 2011 10:00 CEST

Pipe bomb hurts man at Berlin park

Photo: DPA

According to the BZ newspaper, the victim Sigfried L., 57, was riding his bike through Schiller Park in Berlin’s Wedding district on Sunday afternoon and decided to take a rest on a bench.

But when he touched a nearby plastic bag, it exploded and shrapnel hit him in the face and legs.

An ambulance took him to a local hospital, where he underwent surgery for his eye injury. His life is not in danger but he remains hospitalized, the BZ reported.

Police described the explosive device as a homemade pipe bomb filled with metal shards or nails. Sniffer dogs searched the cordoned-off park for more bombs but couldn’t find any.

A similar bomb was founded in a bag nearby in May but it was defused by police and never exploded, authorities said.

The Local/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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