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Police on duty in a raid in Berlin: trafficking in drugs and weapons
Photo: Paul Zinken / dpa
The decryption of the crypto messenger service Encrochat apparently also fatalized members of the Hells Angels.
The police struck in Berlin and Brandenburg with two raids against the rocker milieu.
Seven suspicious members of the Hells Angels were arrested, the police searched a total of 24 apartments and other rooms, as the police in Potsdam and the Berlin public prosecutor announced.
In the "Encrochat procedure" it is about organized biker crime and trafficking in drugs and weapons, it was said.
In Berlin alone, 230 police officers had been on duty since early Thursday morning and searched 18 locations.
After bloody competitive battles a few years ago, it was recently a little quieter in public about the Hells Angels.
The intercepted and decrypted messages from the short message service Encrochat apparently gave the police the opportunity to obtain information from the otherwise isolated rocker milieu.
The Encrochat company offered elaborate encryption for cell phones, which were mainly used by criminals.
60,000 participants used the chat service because it was said that the technology could not be cracked.
The police in the Netherlands and France managed it anyway.
Chats and conversations from April to June 2020 were deciphered - more than 20 million messages.
"Encrochat is an absolute gold mine for the security authorities because criminals here have been communicating about criminal offenses completely openly for years," the Berlin police union said.
"The sheer mass of knowledge is both a curse and a blessing, because it ties up the large capacities of the police for years."
ptz / dpa