Six Arrested In Germany For Selling Narcotics On The Dark Web

On May 31, the Special Deployment Commando (SEK) arrested six people in the area of Aachen, Germany for selling drugs, including amphetamine, on the dark web.

On May 31 evening, the SEK was tasked to perform two raids in Aachen. The first assignment took place on the corner street at about 5:00 pm, however, shortly after 7 pm, there was another police operation in Buschstraße. According to the prosecutor’s office in Aachen, both missions were related to drug-criminality. In the law enforcement operation, the SEK units detained six.

The men who were arrested were three German nationals, 23, 29 and 34 years old. The 23-year-old was arrested at his home in Buschstraße. According to the prosecutor’s office, they had a warrant for the arrest stating that the suspects violated the Narcotics Act. In addition, three other men were arrested who are being investigated by the police. In one of the arrests, investigators already released one suspect.

“Later it was reported that two arrest warrants were issued. There seems to be no suspicion against the third person, he was released several hours later,” the prosecutor’s office stated.

The 23, 29, and the 34-year-old suspects are accused of selling drugs on the dark web. According to the prosecution, all payments were conducted in bitcoins.

The investigation started when Europol provided details on the suspects, which the European agency acquired from seized darknet marketplaces in November 2014. The investigations were first conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), however, later on, it was handed to the Aachen Public Prosecutor’s Office. It is assumed that since the autumn of 2015, the defendants alone sent at least 20 kilograms of amphetamine, with the total price of at least 160,000 euros, to their customers using the national postal service. However, where the criminals kept the profits of their drug operation, is still the subject of the investigation.

Law enforcement authorities secured evidence from the suspects, including computers and amphetamine in the kilogram range. There is also a witness in the case, who will be questioned by the police later.

According to the German news publication Zeit Online, the suspects were allegedly members of a militant neo-Nazi group called “Kameradschaft Aachener Land” (KAL). The comradeship was banned in 2012 by Ralf Jäger, the interior minister of North-Rhine Westphalia, for “aggressively combative attitude … against elementary principles of the constitution”. Zeit Online claimed that the 34-year-old suspect is a “well-known” neo-Nazi. However, this information was not confirmed by the prosecutor’s office in Aachen.

The news outlet also claimed that the arrest exploded the social network, where some members of the German neo-Nazi movement stated that the police action was a conspiracy between the police and the judiciary, while others were “cursing their comrades for doing drugs”.

“It is quite clear that drugs have no place in our ranks”, neo-Nazi activist, Sven Skoda, wrote after the arrests. However, Zeit Online claimed that Skoda referred to some of the arrested suspects as “comrades, who have always stood with our courage and blood in their hearts, even in troubled times to our idea.”