Dresden jewel theft: Five men convicted of audacious 2019 heist
Five men have been found guilty of an audacious jewel heist in the German city of Dresden, BBC reports.
The thieves stole precious items worth €113m (£98m) from the city's state museum in 2019.
Police recovered many of the jewels, including a diamond encrusted sword, but it is feared the rest of the looted treasure may never be found. The men, all members of a notorious criminal family network, face sentences of four to six years.
This was a meticulously planned heist. The gang, who lived in Berlin, visited the site several times and prepared their entry point in advance, using a hydraulic cutting machine to saw through the bars of a protective window covering before taping them back into place.
Then, in the early hours of the morning of 25 November 2019, they set fire to a circuit breaker panel near the museum, plunging the surrounding streets into darkness while two of the men slipped inside.
After a year-long investigation, police made their first arrests. All of those convicted today are members of the "Remmo clan". There are several "clans" in Germany; family networks with Arab roots responsible for major organised crime, including in recent years a raid on a department store and a bank robbery.
