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Norwegian tourist bites chunk off man’s ear in Berlin train

Police arrested a Norwegian tourist after he reportedly bit off part of the ear of a man who tried to break up a fight.

Published: 26 September 2016 12:44 CEST

Norwegian tourist bites chunk off man's ear in Berlin train

File photo: DPA.

Witnesses said that a 43-year-old tourist from Norway started to berate and provoke a German man on Sunday night while on a regional train, according to Berliner Zeitung.

Police reported on Monday that the man’s insults in English led to a physical confrontation between the two men.

A Berlin man, 37, stepped in to try to break up the fight, but the tourist then bit his right ear and tore off a piece measuring several centimetres long.

Other passengers managed to then restrain the Norwegian until the train stopped at Karlshorst station in eastern Berlin and police could arrest him.

The 37-year-old was bleeding heavily and was taken to hospital.

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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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