Germany jails jewellery robbers for spectacular €116mn raid

Five men were sentenced to spend years in prison for stealing jewellery worth €116mn from a museum in Dresden in one of Germany’s most spectacular heists.

The men are all members of the Remmo clan, a notorious criminal family of Arab extraction. They were found guilty of serious arson, grievous bodily harm and criminal damage.

The items were stolen in November 25, 2019 from the Grüne Gewölbe, or Green Vault, one of Germany’s most famous museums. It houses a collection of treasures assembled in the 18th century by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony.

The thieves took 21 pieces of jewellery and caused €1mn of damage after setting fire to a circuit breaker panel near the museum and torching their getaway car, which they had dumped in an underground car park.

The five men, aged between 24 and 29, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to six years.

One of the thieves had a previous conviction for the theft of a giant gold coin weighing 100kg from Berlin’s Bode museum in 2017. The coin was never found and is believed to have been melted down.

CCTV footage released in the immediate aftermath of the Dresden heist showed the thieves entering the Grüne Gewölbe and using axes to smash its glass display cases. After swiping the jewels they sprayed a foam fire extinguisher to cover their tracks before making their getaway in an Audi.

Initially, investigators found no trace of the stolen Dresden jewels. But some of them, with an insurance value of €69mn, were recovered at the end of last year after three of the men confessed to the theft and revealed the location of the loot. That paved the way for a plea deal reached in January this year between prosecutors, judges and four of the accused.

Some commentators had criticised the agreement, saying the culprits did not deserve clemency. But presiding judge Andreas Ziegler said on Tuesday that plea deals were anchored firmly in the German statute books.

“The rule is just as applicable to a Mr Remmo as it is to a Mr Müller or Mr Meier,” he said. It was the law, he added, that confessions and reparation are mitigating circumstances. He added that without the plea deal, authorities would not have recovered any of the stolen items.

However, it is feared the rest of the plundered jewels may never be found. A very rare diamond called the White Stone of Saxony is still missing.

The 15-month trial was one of the most closely watched in recent German judicial history, featuring more than 100 witnesses and 11 experts.

The accused still face an €89mn civil claim for damages from Saxony, the state of which Dresden is the capital. This covers the jewels that are still missing, the damage caused to those that were returned and repairs to the destroyed display cabinets and the museum building.