SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Pete Doherty arrested in Berlin

British rocker Pete Doherty was arrested in Berlin over the weekend for drunken and disorderly behaviour, daily Bild reported on Monday.

Pete Doherty arrested in Berlin
Photo: DPA

The Saturday morning arrest came just a week after the 30-year-old was hauled off stage at a weekend music festival in Munich after he began singing the disused first verse of the German national anthem, which is often associated with the Nazis.

Doherty, the ex-boyfriend of model Kate Moss, was reportedly celebrating the end of his recent tour in Germany at the Kreuzberg district bar Trinkteufel, or “Drink Devil” just before 7 am with friends, the paper said.

“The three of them had just come from Wiener Straße. There they’d been tossed out of a bar,” Trinkteufel barkeeper “Banana” told the paper. “I almost threw Pete out too. He was drinking shots and constantly asking about cocaine.”

Not long after Doherty reportedly threw a glass out of the bar at the window of a Ford Fiesta, at which point a passerby called the police.

Police arrested Doherty and issued a ticket for property damage, releasing him some three hours later.

The arrest is the latest in a long line of controversies for the 30-year-old Babyshambles singer, whose career has been marred by drug use and jail time.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS