Mafia Murders
August 15, 2007
Police in the city in the western German town of Duisburg had found five bodies in a car and a van, while another man died on the way to hospital.
The men were apparently the victims of a vendetta between families connected to the southern Italian mafia in the country's Calabria region, Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said.
Amato also said that he was worried about further, similar vendetta killings in the feud of the so-called 'Ndrangheta organization, which is centered around the village of San Luca and is considered Europe's most powerful mafia group with an estimated annual turnover of $35 billion (35 million euros).
"We are now trying to prevent a similar tragedy (in Calabria)," Amato told a news conference.
Italy's deputy director of police, Luigi De Sena, and anti-mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso meanwhile said such killings in another country were unprecedented.
"The Calabria mafia has a significant presence in Germany, but until now they have always tried to keep a low profile," De Sena told Italian news service ANSA.
Grasso said the six men had probably been sent to Duisburg in a bid to escape the consequences of the vendetta.
In Germany, local police spokesman Hermann-Josef Helmich said the men were aged between 16 and 39.
Police were quizzing family members of the victims and an autopsy was being conducted to determine the exact cause of death.
Execution-style murders
The execution-style killings took place in front of an Italian restaurant. Police said the shots appeared to have been fired through the windscreens of the vehicles.
One car had Duisburg license planes and the other was registered in the town of Pforzheim.
Police spokesman Reinhard Pape said CCTV footage from a nearby public building was being studied, and police were looking into reports that two men had been seen in the area at the time of the shooting.
Police said they were alerted at around 2:30 a.m. by a woman who had heard gunshots.
The victims were found in the Neudorf part of the city on a main thoroughfare some 100 meters (100 yards) from the central station. Police immediately cordoned off the entire area.
Similar killings in February
The killings drew comparisons with the murder of seven Asians in an armed robbery at a Chinese restaurant in the northern German town of Sittensen in February.
Five staff members from Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong were tied up and shot dead along with popular local restaurant owner Danny Wing Hong Fan, 36, and his 28-year-old wife, both British citizens. Only their baby survived.
The case comes to trial in the nearby town of Stade next week. Italians are Germany's second biggest immigrant group after Turks. About 540,000 Italians live in the country and are mostly well integrated.