Diehard Dresden jewelries thieves put German laws to test

Admin I Tuesday, August 20, 2024

 

DRESDEN – Two individuals convicted of stealing jewels from the historic Green Vault in the eastern German city of Dresden will remain free for the time being after failing to present themselves for admission to prison by a deadline on Tuesday.

The break-in at Saxony’s famous treasure chamber museum on November 25, 2019, was one of Germany’s most spectacular art thefts.

The perpetrators stole 21 pieces of jewelries made of diamonds and gems, causing more than €1 million ($1.1 million) in damage, partly because they set one of their getaway cars on fire in an underground car park of a residential building.

The Dresden Regional Court suspended some of the arrest warrants with conditions at the end of the trial as part of an agreement that included the return of most of the loot.

A spokesman for the Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Tuesday that two of the men, a 28-year-old and a 30-year-old, both members of the Berlin-based Remmo crime clan, filed applications for a deferral of enforcement, which were denied.

The younger man’s lawyer requested a judicial decision, which is still pending. It is uncertain whether the other man will contest the denial. If not, he must present himself for imprisonment.

The two men, along with another young man from the Remmo clan who was also convicted, were released from pre-trial detention upon their sentencing in May 2023. The 28-year-old and 30-year-old were summoned to prison admission by July 19 in accordance with the Berlin Penal Plan’s guidelines for their open detention sentence.

They were sentenced to five years and 10 months and six years and two months of imprisonment, respectively, and had already served 911 days in pre-trial detention, which is credited.

In May 2023, the Dresden Regional Court sentenced a total of five young men from the well-known Berlin-based Arab family to several years of imprisonment. The decision is now legally binding.

For four of them, the arrest warrants were suspended with conditions at the end of the trial as part of an agreement that included the return of most of the loot. However, because one of them was still serving another sentence, only three of them were in fact temporarily released.

The fifth convict had to remain in prison because he did not agree to the deal. The sixth defendant, a cousin of the co-defendants, was acquitted.