During a burglary in 2019 in the Green Vault in Dresden, the thieves stole historical pieces of jewellery. Since yesterday, six members of a large family in Berlin have been on trial.
It quickly becomes clear this morning before the Dresden Regional Court that everyone chooses their own form of appearance. There is Wissam R., 24 years old, very experienced in trials and sentences, most recently convicted of stealing a massive gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum, who hides his face perfectly from the cameras with a three-sided folder construct. And there is Mohamed, only 22 years old, who enters the high-security room with an open smile, in a light, large-checked shirt, his hair slicked back, a self-confident, upright posture.
The other four young men move somewhere in between, between openness and defensiveness. One greets acquaintances in the audience with looks. Ten lawyers accompany her, sitting on her right and left.
It is also a special kind of family reunion for which the court is gathering the six accused here this morning, since they all have the same last name. They are brothers and cousins, and together they are said to have stolen jewelry worth 113 million euros from the historic Green Vault on November 25, 2019. Whereby the value is such a thing: the pure material value of the around 4,300 diamonds and brilliants is said to be several hundred thousand euros. The cultural value, on the other hand, cannot be quantified. “The soul of the Saxons has been hit,” said the director of the Dresden State Art Collections, Marion Ackermann, after the theft.
This process, which begins this Friday in Dresden, is about what is probably the most serious art theft in recent decades. About the apparently incorrigible criminal branch of an extended family in Berlin. And, if the critics are to be believed, an astonishing legal leniency towards this branch, which favored this act.
The six accused are between 22 and 29 years old. Two were in fact still adolescents, which is why the youth chamber is negotiating the case. “Last time without a place of residence, is that correct?” Asks the presiding judge, Andreas Ziegel, the defendant, Mohamed R. “No,” his lawyer replies for him. “Last back to mom.”
On November 25, 2019, according to the indictment, everything happened very quickly. At 4:49 a.m., early in the morning, the perpetrators first set fire to a power distributor to switch off the lanterns around the castle. Then they remove the wrought-iron grate in front of one of the windows, which they had pried open days earlier and put back in place only for show. At 4:57 a.m., according to the indictment, two of them, Wissam and Mohamed, climbed into the building, smashed “with brute force” the showcases with axes and grabbed jewelry that they could grab quickly. Some things are left broken. After a few minutes it was all over.
What was subsequently missing are “unique and irreplaceable treasures,” according to the prosecutors. The Elector of Saxony, August the Strong, assembled the collection three centuries ago, 100 pieces as a sign of rank and power that survived all crises and wars, even the destruction of the city in World War II, but not the thieves’ attack now. They wore 21 jewels, including Queen Amalie Auguste’s breast bow set with more than 600 diamonds or the breast star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle. To this day, the pieces have disappeared.
The security checks in this process are significant because of the link to organized crime, a spokesman said. Even in front of the court, the high-security building of the Higher Regional Court, a large contingent of police checks the intersection and the street. Which is still to be discussed. Then it starts late because the defense attorneys are bothered by the fact that the Free State of Saxony is still acting as a joint plaintiff and is allowed to inspect the files. Saxony, they argue, is sufficiently represented in this process with three public prosecutors.
Apparently it wasn’t too difficult to find the alleged perpetrators. The color and make of the getaway car, which they left on fire in an underground car park before they drove on in a Mercedes disguised as a taxi, is considered by investigators to be a reliable indication of a particular extended Berlin family who have a weakness for blue Audis. The police also found DNA evidence in the museum. Before the trial began, senior public prosecutor Jürgen Schmidt had confirmed to the editorial network Germany that 40 other suspects were still being investigated – including security guards. Against all of them there is nothing more than an initial suspicion. “We are very certain that we have identified everyone directly involved in the crime,” explains Schmidt. So those six who are now sitting on the chairs as accused.
So all with the same last name. Only one of them is spelled with just an m in the middle. “Why is that, I’ve been asking myself half my life,” says Rabieh R. when asked by the judge.
So the Rs: For investigators and observers who have been dealing with the criminality of certain large families in Berlin for a long time, the surprise at this finding was limited. Falko Liecke, social councilor and CDU politician in Neukölln, who has been dealing with the Rs for years, speaks of a “special position” for the family within the scene of the so-called clans. The other, well-known extended families are not particularly conspicuous in the area of child and juvenile crime – in the case of the R. family, however, “it often starts at the age of ten with serious crimes such as burglary”.
The Rs include around 1000 family members. In order to show the family relationships, the investigators in Berlin reportedly created a family tree several square meters in size. Only some of the members commit crimes: around 200 are said to be in the police files. But many of them pursue their criminal careers with particular ambition. The Rs originally come from eastern Turkey, came to Germany via Lebanon – and have kept a great distance from any statehood. There is a clear principle in the families, says Liecke: “We are there for the families – we are not interested in the majority society.”
Liecke advocates a hard line, decisive intervention from a young age, for example through family courts – before it’s too late. “If we let the behavior run its course in adolescence, nothing can be changed later,” says Liecke. And: “In relation to the clan families, there are too many cotton ball actions that do nothing. And that is interpreted as a weakness in the majority of society.”
That sounds decisive, sometimes pithy – but the biographies of the perpetrators of the cousins Wissam and Ahmed R. definitely serve as evidence. In November 2019, during the Dresden crime, they were on trial in Berlin for stealing the 100-kilo gold coin from the Bode Museum. The judiciary apparently did not see the risk of recurrence, a possible reason for imprisonment – and let the cousins walk free. The judges at the district court in Erlangen were also surprised by this, where Wissam R. had to answer a few days after the crime in Dresden for stealing tools that were also used in the burglary of the Green Vault.
Wissam R. was convicted for both the gold coin and tool theft. And if it was the case, as the prosecution in Dresden now considers proven, then he dutifully went to all the hearings – and otherwise did his thing. They would have stolen the Saxon jewels during the break in negotiations. According to Liecke, Berlin’s criminal justice system “simply acts too laxly when it comes to the imposition of pre-trial detention.”
But it won’t be an easy process, which also becomes clear on the first day in Dresden. The defense of all defendants denies the allegations on behalf of their mandates. Representatives of the two youngest, the twins, who were adolescents, are calling for their trial to be separated from that of adults. “The conditions are unworthy of a juvenile trial,” criticizes defense attorney Ines Kilian – they are more reminiscent of a terrorism trial.
This is exactly what causes another massive prejudice against the accused – who were literally pilloried in advance by the media. “Just because someone is a member of a certain family, there is no reason to attribute them to a criminal gang,” says Michael Nagel, lawyer for Bashir R. In the end, the evidence against his client would not be enough, he predicts.
This is exactly what the coming months will be about: proving the individual guilt of each individual. It doesn’t matter what their last names are. It will be an extremely complex experiment, that’s already clear: the trial is already scheduled to run until the end of October this year.
