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CRIME

German retiree ‘fed to dog’ by Russian wife in Mallorca

A Russian woman is being held on the suspicion of killing her German husband and feeding bits of him to their dog at their home on Mallorca.

Published: 4 April 2016 14:27 CEST
German retiree 'fed to dog' by Russian wife in Mallorca
The woman allegedly fed bits of him to their pet Staffy. Stock photo: Sheila Sund / Flickr

Svetlana Batukova, 46, is in police custody after she was found next to the bloody corpse of her husband named locally as Horst Hans Henkels on Friday.

A post mortem on Saturday revealed that the German had bled to death after being repeatedly stabbed with a kitchen knife.

Flesh from his arms had reportedly been cut off and fed to the couple’s dog, an American Staffordshire bull terrior, according to the online Periodistadigital.

Initial findings widely reported in local media on the Balearic Islands indicated that the victim had been drugged before being repeatedly stabbed and had bled to death on the floor of their flat in Sant Llorenç.

The couple had reportedly married in January and Henkels had recently undergone surgery on his trachea and could therefore hardly speak.

Local police confirmed that they had been called out several times to the property in recent months over domestic rows.

Batukova, who was reportedly under the influence of alcohol and drugs when arrested, is due to appear before an investigating magistrate on Monday.

See more: Ten bizarre Spanish stories that are not April Fools' jokes  

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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.

Published: 25 April 2024 09:35 CEST
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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