Germany's 'Arab crime gangs' splinter into mini-clans

New research says notorious clans such as Remmo and Al Zein families lack a single crime boss

Police raids linked to the Green Vault jewel heist led them to the Remmo family, of Lebanese origin. Getty Images

Germany’s notorious Arab "crime families" have splintered into mini-clans that have no single boss and sometimes clash violently with one another, a study has found.

Crimes such as the Green Vault jewel heist in Dresden are typically carried out by small units that demand loyalty from an inner family circle, says leading clan researcher Mahmoud Jaraba.

After interviewing hundreds of clan members, Dr Jaraba said conflicts within families can "develop into violence and sometimes to brutality".

However, most family members are not involved in crime, he said.

Politicians in Germany have repeatedly raised the alarm over clan crime, especially in hotspots in Berlin and the industrial Rhineland.

The Remmo family, which has roots in Lebanon, has become one of the underworld's most notorious after five members were convicted over the theft of the Green Vault treasures in 2019.

The historic jewels with an insurance value of €114 million ($121.8 million) were stolen by burglars who smashed their display cases with an axe.

Two of the Green Vault burglars were previously convicted over the theft of a giant gold coin from a Berlin museum and the Remmo clan has also been linked to bank robberies.

The Al Zein family, another prominent clan with Lebanese ancestry, has been the subject of long-running police efforts to arrest and deport senior figures.

However, today's criminal networks do not cover whole families such as Remmo and Al Zein but are today made up of "sub-sub-clans" as small as a dozen people, said Dr Jaraba.

The clans are often "represented as highly structured from top to bottom, under the central leadership of a head of the family who controls and dominates everything relating to the clan", he said.

"I can tell you that does not correspond to reality. There is no central leadership. There is no firm structure."

Many families migrated to Germany in the 1980s but have since splintered into various branches.

In some cases there is a "loose co-operation" between criminal elements in a large clan but not under any direction from family kingpins, Dr Jaraba found.

Elders interviewed by the researcher at the Erlangen Centre for Islam and Law in Europe denied exercising any control over large families.

“They have influence, they have their voice in the community, but most of the time they only have power over a particular family structure, which counts at the very, very bottom," Dr Jaraba said.

In some cases delinquent children fall into criminality of their own accord despite their family's efforts to stop them, he said.

He said most family members want crime to be tackled but are reluctant to work with police as they feel they are under a "general suspicion".

Germany's parliament recently passed a law allowing deportations of people linked to organised crime even if they have no convictions.

About 800 people are being investigated over suspected connections to the clans, of whom 339 are German citizens, 146 are from Lebanon, 129 are Turkish and 46 are Syrian, according to police figures last year.

Public discourse on clan crime can "lead to a feeling of isolation and stigmatisation" especially among young people who consume media coverage, Dr Jaraba's study says.

"For young people in large families there is hardly any room to develop individually and distance themselves from criminal stereotypes," it says.

Dr Jaraba said internal conflicts can arise over marriages within families or in the name of "family honour", sometimes spilling into violence.

However, he rejected the label of "parallel justice" sometimes applied to Germany's clans, saying any family might try to settle differences internally before going to the police.