Again and again, clans and rockers in NRW make headlines with escapades of violence. In recent weeks there have been bloody clashes in Duisburg and Essen with hundreds of thugs and numerous injuries. FOCUS Oline has insight into the investigation and knows the background and some of those allegedly involved.

The night-time operation in the Hochheide district of Duisburg only lasted an hour. At around 3:20 am on May 5, a special police force blasted open the door of a target’s home. The authorities were looking for Kamil D. The 38-year-old Turk is said to have been one of the shooters in the spectacular shooting on Hamborn’s Altmarkt the night before.

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In front of a kebab shop, the Kurdish-Lebanese Saado clan attacked mostly Turkish rockers from the local Hells Angels charter. At least 19 shots were fired, and nearly 100 men beat each other. Four protagonists were taken to hospital, some with serious gunshot wounds. According to FOCUS Online information, an old woman was pushed out of an ambulance by one of the shot gangsters. Two of his buddies simply pushed the man who was shot into the van to the paramedics.

Kamil D., however, who belongs to the Saado clan, was able to dive unhindered. And together with two other suspects from the family syndicate. According to FOCUS online research, the specially set up “Markt” homicide commission later determined through queries that the accused had long since fled from Brussels to Dubai.

The Duisburg public prosecutor’s office did not want to comment on this process when asked. Only so much: According to the spokeswoman for the authorities, Isabel Booz, “three shooters have been identified”. The prosecutor did not comment on names. So far, however, there have been no arrests.

The fugitive Kamil D. is one of the suspects. Three days after the fighting at Altmarkt, a witness contacted the police. The man had a graze on his back. When it started, he saw Kamil D. and his family. Then he ran away. The witness claims to have fallen at the roundabout. Lying on the ground, D. shot him. He doesn’t understand it at all, says the man, after all they’ve known each other for 20 years.

According to their own statements, the prosecutors now have a total of 51 suspects in the complex. As the NRW Ministry of the Interior added on request, the majority comes from the clan and rocker scene. The suspects were transferred based on DNA matches. The case enjoys the highest priority in the Ruhr city: The crime scene was surveyed from the air with a drone and laser scanner in order to collect any evidence. At the same time, Soko Markt is still investigating the cause of the clashes. This is still the subject of the investigation, said prosecutor Booz.

As so often, the investigations in the clan and rocker milieu are difficult. Most Hells Angels in this country now have Turkish or Arabic roots. Many of them belong to the criminal branch of the clan of so-called Mhallamiye Kurds who immigrated to Germany via Lebanon in the 1980s. In the years that followed, a number of offshoots of the family drifted onto the criminal track.

After NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) made the fight against the clans a top priority, the pressure on the family syndicates on the Rhine and Ruhr increased massively. The days of street battles over family honor and spheres of influence seemed passé. In recent weeks, violent riots in Duisburg and Essen with hundreds of thugs and numerous injuries have sobered the security authorities. “In the past few years, we’ve been getting closer and closer to the clan criminals and have the problem getting better and better under control,” Reul told FOCUS Online, “but the truth is that the clans have not disappeared. Sometimes a small spark is enough and a situation explodes.” The case is particularly complicated for the investigators, explained the minister, “when violent clashes occur within the isolated families.”

That’s what happened in Essen last weekend when the El Zein clan attacked their relatives, who call themselves Hassan. Since then, the police have been looking for Hider H.-A. The 26-year-old is said to have stabbed an opponent in the neck. At times, the victim’s life was in danger.

When the 300 or so thugs attacked each other in the north of Essen, the squad of hundreds from the Ruhr metropolis was in Elmau, Bavaria, to protect the G7 summit. In the meantime, however, the police forces have increased their controls. This is how they discovered a mob that had gathered in a square in Essen-Borbeck last Tuesday. When investigators arrived at the scene, many ran away. Law enforcement officers found two loaded pistols in a car. Apparently, the next level of escalation in the clan feud had just been prevented.

The day before, both parties had called in a justice of the peace. But he probably couldn’t settle the conflict. In any case, investigators do not want to rule out further excesses of violence in the coming days: “An El Zein man was seriously injured, either the perpetrators have to pay a lot of blood money or it could crash again.”

A good 20 kilometers further in Duisburg, there has been peace since the shots were fired on Hamborn’s Altmarkt. People are still looking for answers to many questions. Hardly anyone speaks. Only the presumed clan leader Salah Saado deigned to make a few statements shortly after the shooting. Saado is considered a big number in the Ruhr area. In videos he is celebrated as the “back” of well-known gangsta rappers like Kollegah. Insiders refer to the protectors of the talk singers as “backs”. In this way, clan bosses want to earn money from the music business.

When the shots on the Altmarkt had long since died down, Saado appeared late in the evening of May 4th, according to a police notice, at the warning tape that cordoned off the crime scene. The owner of a shisha bar in Düsseldorf said he only wanted to pick up his Mercedes to drive home.

Arab extended families and their criminal empires

But then the businessman started chatting. The dispute between the rockers and a branch of the Saado family has been going on for weeks. The reason is as follows: Apparently, the Duisburg charter for rocker boss Selo A. is said to have “thrown the later clan shooter out of his club”.

The judiciary has been keeping an eye on the Hells Angels boss for years. As early as 2015, Selo A. appeared in a police report. Accordingly, the relationships between the clans and the angel of hell changed again and again, sometimes they were positive, sometimes negative. Mostly it should have been about drugs. According to the findings, there should have been Zoff about the area or the paragraph. In such cases, a kind of justice of the peace had to calm things down.

In the battle at Hamborner Altmarkt, a shooter from the vicinity of the rocker boss was identified. The Duisburg death investigators believe they have identified a Hells Angels suspect on surveillance videos of local shops. The recordings show the 37-year-old German-Turk aiming a dark object in the direction of the nearby roundabout. The evaluators assume that the rocker is aiming a pistol at fleeing opponents. Shots can also be heard on the surveillance video, which also records all external noise via a microphone.

At the same time, the investigators filtered out compromising conversation fragments. Then the suspected shooter yells that his opponent is on the ground. He shot but didn’t hit. When the police siren sounds in the distance, the rocker is advised to wash his hands urgently to remove traces of smoke.

In the scene, the unwritten law applies: never talk to the police. Only family honor counts, not the local rule of law. Threats against a journalist show how brazenly criminal motorcycle gangs and clans are now proceeding. When the tabloid reporter reported on the background to the argument and put the rocker boss in a bad light during the shooting, he received announcements. Selo A. threatened the reporter via social networks. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten you, you dog.” First of all he had to … clarify things. “After that we’ll come to you … for tea.” It could also be that a brother will stop by beforehand.

The Duisburg police took the process so seriously that the editor was advised to travel to an unknown destination first. At the same time, the police contacted the rocker boss’s lawyer to warn him to carry out his threat. The lawyer then reported back and, after consulting the Duisburg rocker top, assured that the journalist had nothing to expect. When asked, the defense attorney declined to comment.

The Duisburg case once again documents the arrogance with which rockers and clans appear. When the police visited the victims who had been shot that May night, they remained silent. In unison, the four men first wanted to speak to their lawyer.

Trouble ensued immediately. The officers wanted to confiscate the cell phones. As practiced, those affected objected to the measure.

In the face of such aggressive tones, the behavior of some police officers seemed a little helpless. One of the big names in the clan, whose left arm had been shot through, completely boldly deleted chat messages in front of her. On the phone he had previously boasted: Nobody should be happy, “I’ll see you again”. Only then did the man give the officers his mobile phone. After surviving the operation, the man shuffled out of the hospital. Dressed only in surgical slippers and a protective cloak, he made his way home.