It took at least nine hard blows from an ax to smash the glass case in Dresden's historic Green Vault. Once the glass shattered, the two masked thieves grabbed 21 priceless diamond-studded artifacts and disappeared.
Adorned with more than 4,300 diamonds, the treasures stolen from the Green Vault were worth at least 113 million euro , according to the state prosecutor's office. However, the director of Dresden's State Art Collection, Marion Ackermann, said their material value doesn't even begin to reflect their "incalculable" historical and cultural importance.
Roy Ramm, a security consultant and former commander of specialist operations at New Scotland Yard in London, told CNN that crimes like this are increasingly rare. "What this says to me is that these people planned meticulously; they were running through, in their own minds, how the robbery would take place, and what the police reaction would be, and all the time they were thinking of ways of disrupting the police activity or giving themselves more time," Ramm said.
First, police said, the thieves or their accomplices set fire to a power distribution box near the Green Vault. This caused the streetlights nearby to go out, plunging the whole area into darkness.The police said security camera video showed the thieves knew where they were going.
Police said the robbers escaped the scene in the Audi and that, just 13 minutes after the CCTV camera captured the first images of them entering the vault, the gang's car had been abandoned and set on fire in an underground garage some three miles away. The police connected the car to the robbery almost immediately.
He said two other security guards were investigated. One was suspected of handing documents about the Green Vault and its security systems to the perpetrators and was arrested four days after the heist. The other guard was released following an investigation, he said. Then, on November 17, 2020, almost a year after the Green Vault's prized treasures were stolen, the police launched a huge security operation in Berlin, bringing in special forces and 1,638 officers from across Germany.
Interpol issued a red notice for the twins, but it took another month before Mohammed was caught in a car in the Berlin neighbourhood of Neukölln -- on the Remmo clan's turf.A sixth and final suspect in the case was apprehended in August 2021, police said.
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