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Police shoot ill man after hammer attack

Two German policemen could be charged with manslaughter after shooting dead a mentally ill man who attacked them with a hammer, a state prosecutor said on Wednesday.

Published: 2 August 2012 08:31 CEST

Police shoot ill man after hammer attack

Photo: DPA

The pair arrived at the 51-year-old man’s house in Lower Saxony to accompany a doctor and a local official when they went to see the man, who had become violent after stopping his medication.

When the police entered the isolated farmhouse the man shared with his mother, he charged at them with a hammer, allegedly hitting one officer on the head several times.

The other officer shot the victim three times, killing him. His mother was not home.

A post mortem will be conducted, while the Oldenburg state prosecutor is investigating whether the police officer who shot the man was acting in self-defence, a spokeswoman said that evening.

A reconstruction of the incident would, she said, help the prosecution decide.

DPA/The Local/jcw

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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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