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Madeleine McCann trail leads to Germany

British police believe that Madeleine McCann's suspected kidnappers are German-speakers. On Monday they released two photofit images in the hope of solving the case some six years after her disappearance.

Published: 14 October 2013 08:52 CEST

Madeleine McCann trail leads to Germany

Photo: DPA

An appeal from McCann’s parents is to be broadcast on the BBC during Monday’s episode of Crimewatch. It will also be shown on German television on Wednesday, at 8:15pm on ZDF, during crime programme Aktion XY…ungelöst.

The two photos show men between the ages of 20 and 40, one with short dark hair and the other a shaved head.

Police believe two of the suspects speak German and could have played a key role in the three-year-old’s disappearance in May 2007 from her parents’ hotel room in Portugal.

Chief investigator at Scotland Yard Andy Redwood said in a press conference that he hoped the television appeal would help bring forward more information that could push them closer to finding the girl.

“For six years we did not give up our worldwide search for our daughter. Now there is new information, new hope,” the McCanns told Bild newspaper.

READ MORE: Police identify baby 25 years after death

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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