The Dutch-based crime gang Mocro Mafia is under suspicion yet again after a bomb attack in the city center of Cologne on Monday morning.
The Mocro Mafia, a criminal gang of Moroccans based in the Netherlands, has been expanding its territory into Germany and causing tensions with other drug gangs.
Surveillance footage posted on social media showed a person dressed in a black and white jacket with the hood pulled over his face walking to the entrance of the “Vanity Club Cologne.” After placing an unidentified object on the ground, he then searches through his pockets, pulls out an incendiary device, lights it, and throws it onto the object. The perpetrator then flees the scene.
The explosion that ensued destroyed the entrance to the nightclub, and at least one person, an employee of the club, was slightly injured.
The injured employee was most likely the person also seen in the footage, stepping out from behind some large garbage containers positioned in front of the nightclub’s entrance. He had been approaching the burning object before it exploded but appeared to be mostly protected by one of the containers.
According to Junge Freiheit, such attacks in North Rhine-Westphalia are increasing, with several bomb attacks and assassinations on cafes, residential buildings, and business premises in the recent past. The police say the attacks are related to the drug mafia in the area.
Drug violence has become a rising problem in Germany. In June, an African man detonated an explosive device outside a restaurant in the city of Solingen, hospitalizing four, including a 7-year-old girl. Two years earlier, the Arab-owned restaurant had been raided in relation to a gang crime.
In July, the German Special Task Force (SEK) freed a kidnapped couple who had been tortured from a villa in Cologne.
The couple were members of the El-Zein clan, a prominent Lebanese mafia organization primarily based in Germany, and are suspected of having stolen cocaine and cannabis during a deal between their clan and the Mocro Mafia.
Several bomb attacks and hostage situations ensued in the following month on residential buildings in the Cologne district of Zündorf and other cities.
