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Bunny escapes nasty compost bin death

A man who opened a compost bin to chuck in some rubbish found a large rabbit looking at him - its owner had thrown it away, claiming she thought it was dead. Animal protection officers in Saxony are now investigating.

Published: 6 November 2012 07:43 CET

Bunny escapes nasty compost bin death

The rescued rabbit and Michael Thiel of Görlitz animal shelter. Photo: DPA

The 64-year-old man found the bewildered bunny last week in the bin by his building in Görlitz – and immediately knew where it had come from, Die Welt newspaper reported on Monday.

It is now being housed in the local animal shelter. The paper said the Görlitz Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals already knew the woman and her husband and had been involved in previous monitoring of the couple with the veterinary inspection office.

When asked about the bunny, the woman allegedly said she thought it was dead – although it seemed perky enough when the neighbour opened the compost bin.

“It would have died a miserable death,” Peter Vater, head of the Görlitz Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, told the paper. Vater added that he expected the family to receive a ban on owning pets, which involves regular monitoring.

The Local/mbw

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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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