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CRIME

Singer praised neo-Nazi immigrant murders

German prosecutors said Tuesday they had charged the lead singer of a suspected neo-Nazi band who wrote a song about a series of racist murders thought to have been carried out by far-right extremists.

Singer praised neo-Nazi immigrant murders
Photo: DPA

Authorities in the northwestern German city of Osnabrück said they had charged the 42-year-old lead singer of the band “Gigi and the Brown Town Musicians” with incitement to racial hatred.

Prosecutors are also investigating two other songs on a CD entitled “Adolf Hitler Lives.” One calls for all Turks in Germany to be deported to Istanbul, the other denies any Jews died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Alexander Retemeyer, a spokesman for prosecutors, told AFP: “We have pressed charges of incitement to racial hatred at the local court in Meppen.”

So far, only the singer, who has not been named by authorities, is under suspicion because he wrote the lyrics.

Germans have been shocked at the recent discovery of a small far-right group believed responsible for the unsolved murders of eight men of Turkish origin and a Greek between 2000 and 2006 as well as a German policewoman in 2007.

The killings had long been called the “kebab murders” because some victims ran snack shops.

Two members of the so-called National Socialist Underground claimed responsibility for the 10 deaths as well as a 2004 bombing in predominantly Turkish district of Cologne which wounded more than 20 people.

The two were found dead in November in an apparent suicide.

On Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to lead a service commemorating the murders.

AFP/mdm

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CRIME

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

German police said Wednesday they had arrested 11 suspected members of a Nigerian mafia group behind a large-scale dating scam.

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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