Cologne drug war: Four years in prison for assistants of the torture drivers!

Cologne drug war: Four years in prison for assistants of the torture drivers!

A dark chapter in the Cologne drug war recently found a first end with a judgment of the Cologne Regional Court. The focus is on a 30-year-old Iraqi who was sentenced to four years in prison. This was reported by the Tagesschau . The man confessed to playing an important role in a cruel scenario in which a couple from the Ruhr area were brutally tortured to blackmail information about stolen cannabis. The background to the hostage -taking was suspected that the couple was involved in the robbery of 350 kilograms of cannabis.

The shocking details of the hostage -taking, which took place in July 2024, were documented by video recordings, which showed the couple's abuse in the basement of a villa in Rodenkirchen. The convict was not directly involved in the torture, but it was guilty of helping the perpetrators by depositing weapons and money. The public prosecutor had originally called for a penalty of five and a half years, but the judges decided on a milder punishment.

Other processes in the drug complex

The Cologne judiciary faces a wave of drug crimes that also result in a current indictment against three other men. These are on trial because of the robbery of 700 kilograms of marijuana and hostage. The incidents stretched to the entire Rhineland and were accompanied by a series of explosive attacks and shots on residential buildings that fueled fear among the population. According to information from ZDF today, the security precautions for these processes have been increased accordingly.

These criminal machinations are not an isolated case. According to the Statista , around 347,000 cases of drug crime were registered in Germany in 2023 alone, an increase of two percent compared to the previous year. Over 90 percent of the cases accounted for cannabis, which has been at least partially legalized since April 2024. In view of these developments, illegal business with drugs is still an important problem for public safety and health.

The dramatic incidents in Cologne reflect the challenges in front of which the law enforcement authorities are facing. The arrests of a total of 23 people who took place in January 2025 in connection with Cologne drug gangs were rated by Kripo boss Michael Esser as an outstanding success. These developments show that crime around drugs is not just a local, but a social problem that affects the security situation for many people in the region.