German police raid 20 buildings in crackdown on organised crime

Members of the Remmo family, who have ties in Beirut, were reportedly targeted by officers

Masked police officers guard the entrance to a building at Wildenbruchstrasse in Berlin's Neukoelln district. AFP

Hundreds of German police officers raided more than 20 buildings in Berlin and the state of Brandenburg on Thursday in a crackdown on two feuding organised crime families.

Berlin prosecutors said on Twitter that two people were arrested in the raids targeting illegal drug and weapons trafficking.

Authorities were also investigating charges of bodily harm linked to a “clash of clans” between an Arabic and a Chechen crime family last November, prosecutors said, when there were several violent confrontations between the organisations.

Berlin police said that in addition to their own Swat teams and other personnel, federal agents, Brandenburg police and tax officials were involved in the raids – more than 500 personnel in all.

Bild newspaper reported that members of the Remmo family were involved. Two of the main suspects in the theft of 18th-century jewels from a Dresden museum in 2019 are part of the family, which has ties to Beirut.

Mohamed Remmo, 21, was arrested by Berlin authorities in December in connection with the theft at the Green Vault Museum, while his twin brother Abdul Majed Remmo is the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Other members of the Remmo family were convicted last year over the theft of a 100-kilogram Canadian gold coin, called the Big Maple Leaf ,from Berlin’s Bode Museum in 2017.

The coin, with an estimated value of €3.7 million ($4.4m) has not been recovered and authorities believe it was cut into smaller pieces and sold.