They have mafia structures, they are accused of various crimes – but Arafat Abou-Chaker, their leader, is never convicted. How did the clan develop its organized crime?
Actually, the trial of Arafat Abou-Chaker in front of the Berlin district court is about assault and threats. Abou-Chaker receives a probationary sentence of ten months. But what follows after the verdict on this Tuesday, is spectacular: After the verdict, the spectators are asked from the hall, then the prosecutor enforces a warrant and brings Abou-Chaker directly into the detention center Moabit. He, the clan chief, is accused of planning the kidnapping of the rapper Bushido, his wife and their children. The background of the arrested and his family.
Who are the Abou-Chakers?
A clan of Lebanese Palestinians, according to police estimates, 200 to 300 members live in Berlin. According to the police, part of the Abou-Chakers isolates themselves against society, the public and also against the legal system. They fulfill the characteristics of organized crime and have mafia structures. Some of the Abou-Chakers are accused of racketeering, drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, robberies and pimping. Amongst other things.
Who is your leader?
Arafat Abou-Chaker, born in Berlin in 1976, is considered the head of the clan. That he got into the public, is due to the rapper Bushido. In his 2008 biography, he told how Arafat Abou-Chaker got him out of his contract with the label „Aggro Berlin“. „All the glaring stories that happen in Berlin always have something to do with the Abou-Chaker family,“ Bushido continued. And: Arafat was „one of the most powerful and notorious men in Berlin“.
For years Bushido wants to have lain „as if in a vegetative state“, in his connection to the criminal family clan Abou-Chaker he had felt „like a bondman“.
In 2013, the star reported a general power of attorney Bushido Arafat Abou-Chaker is said to have issued. In 2018 a big interview with Bushido followed, in which he announced the separation of the two former business partners and friends.
What do you know about the structures of the clan?
„These are complete parallel societies in the middle of Germany,“ Bushido’s wife Anna-Maria said in a star interview. The role distribution within the clan is clear: „The women have nothing to do with the business, the men clarify.The woman is there to get children, to run the household, to obey the man to subordinate.“
The study „Paralleljustice“, published in 2015 by Islamic scholars Mathias Rohe and Mahmoud Jaraba from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, revealed what the family clans generally hold together. As a result, the clans spread „a climate of fear“. In whole streets of Neukölln, Wedding, Kreuzberg or Charlottenburg, but also in their own relatives, where all would have to follow the „family honor“, whether they like it or not.
How could the Abou-Chakers build their criminal machinations?
According to Stern, their story begins in the 1960s at UN Camp Wavel, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. From there, the parents of Arafat Abou-Chaker fled to Germany, more and more brothers and sisters were followed with their families, which helped the clan to its enormous size.
At that time many Lebanese and Palestinians came to Germany, later also Kurds, who lived in Lebanon. All of them were often only tolerated, were not allowed to work or send their children to school. Some would then have „withdrawn to their own clan family and their old tribal law,“ says Dirk Jacob, the department head at the Berlin State Office for Criminal Investigation. Pushed to the margins of society, the former refugees restored their brought social structures, writes Ralph Ghadban, a native Lebanese and German Islamic scholars.
The clans used to control their neighborhood, extort protection money, or meddle in drug trafficking. For some years, however, they also stand out due to spectacular, professionally executed crimes. Plunder of jewelry stores and savings banks, in which millions were looted. Raids on a poker tournament or a luxury department store. And possibly the theft of the gold coin „Big Maple Leaf“ from the Berlin Bode Museum, which is the size of a car tire.
How has legal action been taken against Arafat Abou-Chaker?
According to the picture, Arafat Abou-Chaker has been on record at the Berlin judiciary since 1991, that is, since he was a teenager – but not previously convicted. Although the public prosecutor’s office has investigated him in 33 cases, all proceedings have been terminated for lack of evidence or an acquittal has been concluded. Witnesses often withdrew their statements or appealed to memory in memory gaps. Two fines were received by Arafat Abou-Chaker in May 2016 and in November 2017. Due to traffic offenses.
Now it was in the trial against him in the district court for assault and threat to a janitor. Arafat Abou-Chaker received a probationary sentence of ten months. After the verdict, the spectators were asked to leave the hall. The prosecution then executed a warrant and took Abou-Chaker to the Moabit Detention Center. Abou-Chaker was „the date of a crime urgently suspected,“ said the spokesman for the Berlin prosecutor. The head of the clan is accused of planning a revenge move against Bushido and his family.
