Berlin Bans Biker Gang, Searches in Progress, 1,300 Officers Involved in Operation

The city state of Berlin just dealt a blow to organized crime, by banning the ‘Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club Berlin Central’. A large-scale police operation against the gang commenced early this morning.

Berlin, September 29th, 2022 (The Berlin Spectator) — In 2012, the ‘Berlin City’ chapter of the ‘Hell’s Angels’ was banned. Since, the biker gang has founded a new chapter called ‘Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Berlin Central’ (‘HAMC Berlin Central’). Along with its support group ‘MP 81 Berlin Central’, it was just banned and dissolved by Berlin’s Senate Administration of the Interior. As of today, the gang’s symbols and those of its affiliates may not be spread or worn. Both organizations are not allowed to be active in Germany anymore.

Seized Assets

According to the Senate, the club’s assets were just seized. In the early morning, the police started raiding and searching 40 apartments and prison cells in Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt as well as the ‘Hell’s Angel’s club house in Berlin’s Reinickendorf borough. As many as 1,300 policemen and policewomen are involved in the operation. It also includes the elite police units SEK and GSG9.

The Senate Administration of the Interior says ‘HAMC Berlin Central’ was a substitute organization for biker gang organizations that had been banned before. This group had mainly been active in Berlin, and it had followed unconstitutional goals. After an assassination at a betting office in 2014, several of its members left the country. Back then, many arrests followed.

Criminal Activities

Today’s operation showed that the Berlin authorities would not just look the other way when a new organization replaced a banned gang, Interior Senator Iris Spranger said. The action against those who undermined the law in order to continue with their criminal activities was necessary. The Senator thanked her colleagues, the Berlin Prosecution as well as the Federal Police and the Police Departments in Berlin and the other federal states that were involved today.

In Germany, the ‘Hell’s Angels’ have been linked to all kinds of crime, including murder, drug trade, the illegal possession of fire arms and forced prostitution. The authorities became aware of many members and their crimes by hacking into encyrpted Internet chats the gangs used because they were supposed to be inaccessible.

Nationwide Ban

In 2010, the Interior Ministers in Germany’s sixteen federal states started looking into a nationwide ban of the German umbrella organization ‘Hell’s Angel’s MC Germany’, but it has not happened so far. In the past four to five decades, ten local ‘Hell’s Angels’ chapters in Germany were forbidden though, including the ‘HAMC Berlin Central’.

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