Dutch "Mocro Mafia" expands to Germany
31 July 2024
Public gang crime, drug trafficking and the murder of the investigative journalist Peter de Vries in 2021 as the climax: the so-called "Mocro Mafia" has kept the Dutch police on their toes for decades. Recent police reports suggest that the group has now expanded eastwards, settling also in western Germany.
The name of the group refers to several different organised crime groups that originally arose from the Dutch Moroccan community in the 1990s. It looks like the gang has recently been involved in different crime cases around the German city of Cologne, including the kidnapping of two members of a hostile gang but also multiple explosions of ATMs.
 | Jasper Bennink While Germany has been fighting all kinds of gang crime over the past few years, the emergence of the "Mocro Mafia" would further complicate the efforts of the country’s security forces in containing criminality. The willingness of the group to use violence, also against innocent bystanders, makes this a particularly concerning development: according to Dutch sources, the group has been responsible for the assignment of 20 to 30 contract kills every year. Germany is not the first country to which the "Mocro Mafia" has spread. The gang has established connections to Belgium and Spain as well, with other locations potentially still being hidden. |
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