The trial for the spectacular coup in Dresden’s Green Vault against six young men from Berlin has been underway since the end of January. Now the first witnesses have been summoned.
Dresden/Berlin – In the process of breaking into the Dresden Green Vault and the theft of precious historical jewels, the district court wants to start taking evidence.
According to a court spokesman, the first witnesses are invited for the second day of the trial – three employees of the security service from the Zwinger opposite the Residenzschloss, which houses the famous Treasury Museum. It is possible that the judges will announce decisions on two outstanding applications from the defense before they are questioned.
Total value of over 113 million euros
The eagerly awaited trial of six young men between the ages of 22 and 28 began on January 28th. The Germans, all from a well-known Berlin extended family of Arab origin, are accused of aggravated gang theft, arson and particularly aggravated arson. According to the investigators, they meticulously planned the burglary on November 25, 2019 and also prepared during flying visits to Dresden. They are said to have stolen 21 pieces of jewelery with a total of 4,300 diamonds and brilliants with a total value of over 113 million euros.
The 22- to 28-year-olds were caught in several raids in Berlin. Because two of them were only 20 years old at the time of the crime, the Grand Criminal Court is acting as a juvenile chamber – in a high-security room of the Higher Regional Court, in which several cases with a terrorist background have already been conducted. At the start of the trial, the defense had requested, among other things, that the proceedings against the two youngest suspects and twin brothers be separated because they were still adolescents by legal standards at the time.
Perpetrators are said to have been armed
The Chamber has meanwhile rejected an application by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD) for admission as a joint plaintiff, which was criticized by the defence. From their point of view, the purely economic interest of a non-natural person is not sufficient, according to the court spokesman in the decision. The lawyers had complained that the chamber had already made the complete investigation file available to the SKD before its decision and that the defense was not heard as unlawful. Because among the witnesses who generally do not have access to the files before they testify, there are also employees of the SKD.
According to the indictment, days before the museum was broken into, the suspects removed part of the cast-iron grate and temporarily put it back in place so that they could get into the building more quickly on the day of the crime. They are said to have been armed and in the course of the spectacular coup left over one million euros in property damage – also by setting fire to a power box in the old town and setting fire to their getaway car in the underground car park of a residential building.
Four of the accused are in custody, two are serving a youth sentence for the equally spectacular theft of a huge gold coin in 2017 from the Bode Museum in Berlin. So far, the three brothers and their cousins have not commented on the allegations. dpa
