Although it is already a summary, the public prosecutor needed more than three quarters of an hour on Wednesday afternoon in the Düsseldorf district court to read out the indictment against seven members of the Turkish-Lebanese Al-Z. clan from Leverkusen.

There is an endless string of serious and very serious crimes that men and women between the ages of 22 and 47 are said to have committed.

In their 127-page indictment, the organized crime experts at the Düsseldorf public prosecutor’s office paint a picture of an unscrupulous, criminally looted community that is consistently criminal down to the most perfidious detail, which brutally demanded protection money from other migrants, such as a car repair shop owner or the operator of a small pizzeria,

Pure burger

Political correspondent in North Rhine-Westphalia.

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In fact, since 2014, the family has submitted 26 applications for Hartz IV, "concealing their assets," according to prosecutor Radbod Tafaghordrad.

"The conditions for receiving social benefits were never met, the family used the money to lead a life of luxury." Those family members who did not pretend to be penniless also benefited from the money they stole, because the social benefits migrated to knowledge the investigator into a common pot, into which the other stolen or extorted money also flowed.

The clan had a "common family fortune to which everyone contributed and in which everyone participated," according to the prosecutor.

14,000 euros under the floor mat

Special police forces stormed the Leverkusen villa a year ago and seized firearms, luxury watches, cars and 340,000 euros in cash.

The North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) spoke at the time of a "blow against the first league of clan crime".

The indictment presented on Wednesday underscores that. If the allegations are correct, then practically the entire interaction of the family with the outside world was criminal in all conceivable unbridled variants.

The alleged clan leader Badia Al-Z.

was not arrested in the villa a year ago, but after an illegal gambling night in Duisburg.

Officials found more than 14,000 euros in cash under a floor mat of the 47-year-old man's luxury limousine.

The investigators also suspect the man of having been involved as a "peace judge" in a "parallel justice system" for the internal clarification of disputes.

According to the indictment, that was just a ruse, as the case of the pizzeria operator suggests.

After a "mediation" by the head of the clan, he had paid more than 14,000 euros in protection money, but a little later the windows of his company were smashed and inventory destroyed, and the clan still demanded a further 10,000 protection money.

The Al-Z. clan is one of the largest clans in North Rhine-Westphalia.

According to the latest NRW clan picture, 277 suspects are attributed to criminal members of the extended family, who are also based in other federal states, and are said to be responsible for 441 crimes.

At the end of August last year, the district court sentenced five other members of the Al-Z. clan to long prison terms for hostage-taking, dangerous bodily harm, particularly serious robbery and particularly serious extortion.

Five years ago, the men cheated a Dutch car dealer when he sold a Rolls Royce and months later in Venlo they beat him up, kidnapped him, threatened to shoot him and robbed him.

The most recent crackdown on members of the Al-Z. clan took place in early May.