Germany charges 6 over Dresden Green Vault heist

German prosecutors said Thursday they charged six men over the 2019 Dresden museum heist. 

Armed men had broken into the Green Vault museum and snatched 21 pieces of jewelry encrusted with more than 4,300 diamonds.

Prosecutors said the insured value of the pieces reached €113.8 million ($135 million) — in what has been labeled as the biggest heist in modern German history.
 

What we know about the suspects

Prosecutors accuse the six German nationals, aged between 22 and 27 years old, of aggravated gang robbery and aggravated arson.

Two of the suspects had already been convicted for stealing a 100-kilogram (220-pound) gold coin from Berlin's Bode Museum in 2017 — another robbery that shook up Germany.

Prosecutors did not name the suspects. But police had said, during their manhunt, that the suspects were members of the so-called "Remmo clan," a family of Arab origin who are notorious for ties to organized crime.

The break-in

The suspects were allegedly armed with a loaded revolver and an automatic loading gun with a silencer when they broke into one of the world's oldest museums in the early hours of November 25, 2019. 

According to prosecutors, the suspects laid a fire before the break-in to cut the power supply for street lights outside the museum and set fire to a car in a nearby garage.

Priceless 18th-century jewelry and other valuables from the collection of the Saxon ruler August the Strong were taken that night, said Dresden's Royal Palace, which runs the museum. 

Investigators are still searching for the stolen artifacts, prosecutors said.

fb/rc (AFP, dpa, epd)