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Police arrest suspect in asylum seeker murder

Police in Dresden have arrested a man on suspicion of killing his flatmate, an asylum seeker from Eritrea, on Monday January 12th.

Published: 22 January 2015 17:39 CET

Police arrest suspect in asylum seeker murder

Demonstrators in Dresden with photos of murder victim Khaled Idris Bahray

State prosecutors in the Saxon capital told journalists that the man has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

Bild reported earlier that the flatmate, a 26-year-old fellow Eritrean, had confessed while being interrogated by investigators.

The body of 20-year-old victim Khaled Idris Bahray was found on January 13th in the courtyard of an apartment building where he lived with seven other African refugees.

The police had originally said that there was no evidence of foul play in his death, before an autopsy showed that he had died of knife wounds in his throat and chest.

Some had criticized the police for not immediately suspecting a xenophobic attack, and anti-racism demonstrations were held at the site where the body was found.

SEE ALSO: MP files complaint after Eritrean refugee killed

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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