Waching daily Jan 8 2017

Scene of the crime: Berlin

Whether it's about robbing millions from KaDeWe department store,

the raid of a poker tournament, or as in this case: The armed robbery of a casino at Alexanderplatz

The perpetrators always belong to the same social environment

They're members of notorious Lebanese kurdish family clans

The State Office of Criminal Investigations has especially established a department

which specialises in these dangerous criminals

There's one family of over several hundred members. About 70 of them committed criminal offences within the past 3 years

and each of them committed 10 criminal offences on average

Therefore, they've committed many more offences within the same time frame compared to German criminals

Criminals from ten of these kurdish Lebanese family clans are causing problems for the police

They have committed several thousand criminal offences over the past years

The individual clans are led by a head of the family

The brothers, sons and cousins deal with everything that brings in a lot of money (drugs, prostitution, protection money etc)

Over a thousand individual family members are known to police

According to my knowledge, extraordinary robberies or break-ins always involved members of arabic family clans over the past years

These findings however don't actually lead to these networks being broken up

Although the investigators have been successful in reconstructing the origins of these criminal family structures

deporting them poses a difficult problem

They originate from the south-east of Turkey, close to Mardin

They then travelled to Lebanon in the 70s and 80s and from there they moved on to Europe, with a focus on Germany

Whereby they essentially threw away their original identity documents

and then gave themselves a new identity in Germany

Their passports are mostly thrown away shortly after their arrival,

The police archives mostly store what has coincidentally been found in garbage bins at airports

The people who are behind this claim to be stateless palestinians and therefore can't be deported

Yes, here we have Turkish passports from 1996 onwards, there are about 1,400 documents

This cabinet contains passports from the years 1996 and 1997, there's more in the other cabinets

But the fact that criminals can't simply be deported is only part of the problem

as the judiciary already reaches its limits when it comes to determining the crimes

An example:

About a year ago, members of two notorious family clans get into an argument

18 shots were fired

But later, when it came to giving testimonies, everyone was silent

The clan members stick together in front of the German justice system and put a stop to investigation proceedings that way

When the victims and perpetrators both agree not to give any statements

for whichever reason, because there's a threat scenario, because they reached an agreement behind the scenes,

then it's very difficult for the court to do anything about it and to prosecute the accused

The families don't acknowledge German law, they rather let people such as Hassan Alush settle their disputes

Alush acts as a type of Islamic judge (google "qadi")

But even he wears a bullet-proof vest

His brother, who was also a mediator between the clans, was shot

What do you need that for?

For security, and that certainly helps me, as I'm being threatened

They murdered my brother

in 2004... in 2002 they hit his shoulder but in 2004 they murdered him

and that's why I always wear the vest

The German penal system is perceived as a Kindergarten by his clients, Hassan Alush openly states

and their family's livelihood is secured either way

Alush knows how certain people in his surroundings think

I don't care if I go to prison. My wife and children have their rent and their monthly living costs paid by the state

Yes, what we earn from this... ooooh it fills our pockets

Meaning, even when clan members go behind bars due to their crimes, it's not really a punishment

Despite criminal profits in the millions, the clans are still a burden on the tax payers

According to our knowledge, 80-90% live on benefits

and their cars, the expensive cars that are sometimes seen on the street, are usually rented or leased so we can't do much about it

In October 2008, a man on benefits runs a red light in a 90.000 Euro BMW

a pensioner gets hit and dies

The perpetrator, from a lebanese family clan known to police, simply speeds off

We meet with the migration officer of the Berlin-Neukölln district

On the way to work, he spots Lebanese drug dealing youths

They kept getting younger and younger, and when in the end a 12 year old showed up, my patience was at an end

So I took photos from afar, then they followed me into the subway, pulled a knife and threatened me

An experience that was difficult to get over for Arnold Mengel-Koch

In schools, the children of clans terrorise their fellow students

Until a short while ago, the district of Berlin-Neukölln had employed private security guards in schools for this reason

The district got the situation under control

However, it had to invest over half of its yearly budget into this measure

3-4 years ago, we had over 50 violent assaults in the schools of Berlin's Neuköln district

mainly committed by the sons of lebenese kurdish family clans

It went this far: When the younger siblings felt insulted in school, they called their parents and brothers on their mobile phones

Who then bullied and beat up the fellow students in school, beat the teachers and in one case also beat up the school director

The case was that I went to speak to the mother at home, told her "Your son will go to prison if he continues this way, he'll be 14 soon"

And she then said "Mr. Mengel-Koch, it really doesn't matter. Imprisonment is what makes a man."

Integration is impossible with such a value system

But even after tediously identifying the true identities of the criminals, they cannot be deported

According to the interior ministry, Turkey has been refusing to take back these criminals for years