Dusseldorf – They had lived in luxury and still collected hundreds of thousands of euros from the job center – on Thursday, five members of the Al-Zein family were sentenced to prison terms at the Düsseldorf district court.
In June 2021, the million dollar villa of the extended Lebanese family in Leverkusen was stormed by police tanks, and the head of the family Badia (47) and relatives were arrested there and in other raids
The accusation: Several family members had received a total of 463,000 euros from the job center over the years. They had converted the million-dollar villa into sham rental apartments, and had not disclosed cash assets of several hundred thousand euros. The indictment included many other allegations, including hostage-taking and dangerous bodily harm.
The family walked into the courtroom on Thursday – after an agreement and bail of 80,000 euros, they were now free. Father Badia appeared in Gucci jogging pants for around 800 euros and a black down coat. Two companions walked in front of him, hitting the cameras of two TV journalists in the hallway.
This time there were no relatives in the audience – Badia had let himself be celebrated at the start, threw kisses. He accepted the verdict without much emotion: six years in prison for commercial and gang fraud, hostage-taking and dangerous bodily harm. Background: The clan members held and beat a man in a basement. Chief Badia played a central role.
Curious: To mitigate the sentence, the judge recognized that the clan boss had no criminal record, was in custody under pandemic conditions, could not receive visitors there and could not write to anyone either – because he is illiterate.
His wife got two years probation and one of his sons got a year and nine months probation. Two other sons were each sentenced to three years in prison.
Badia’s sons Sehmus (30, left) and Merhen (28, right) in court (archive photo)
All were then able to leave the court freely, and the prison sentence only begins when the verdict is final. The judge: “The fact that it was a family or an Arab family neither increased nor reduced the sentence. It is always the deed of the individual that counts.”