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Women instigate brutal knifing in front of Berlin club

Two women are being held by police in Berlin after knifing a man in front of a club early on Sunday morning.

Published: 1 September 2008 11:30 CEST

The women aged 24 and 31 were apparently looking for trouble after a long night out in the city’s Schöneberg district, the daily newspaper Berliner Morgenpost reported on Monday.

After trying to pick fights with several guests in the club Nachtleben they were kicked out by bouncers. According to police, the club had held a party ahead of the start of the Muslim month of fasting Ramadan.

The two women of Turkish descent then fell upon the 21-year-old Turkish man Firat G., who had celebrated his birthday in the club, at around 6 am on Sunday. As he tried to leave the scene, the two women drew knives and stabbed him several times.

The club’s bouncers witnessed the attack and held the women until police arrived. The man was admitted to the hospital for an emergency operation.

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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