There is a deal in the trial for the theft from the Green Vault: if the accused confess, they will have to be held in detention for a shorter period of time. But the stories told by the perpetrators do not seem credible to the public prosecutor. One of the thieves is said to have no memory of what happened.
The public prosecutor's office considers the confessions in the process of stealing jewels from the Dresden Green Vault to be not very credible. The testimonies of five of the six defendants are "at least incomplete," said senior public prosecutor Christian Kohl at the hearing in the Dresden district court.
It is not very credible that nobody claimed to have benefited from the act or knew about the meaning of the jewelry, but now everyone is ashamed, a defendant can no longer remember the act despite participation and the idea came from a defendant "who had the best chances of a juvenile detention," explained the senior public prosecutor. According to Kohl, the public prosecutor's office still has many unanswered questions and the information provided by the accused about an "extremely complex crime" in which six people were involved is "only the tip of the iceberg".
At the beginning of January, the defense, the public prosecutor's office and the court agreed on a deal: the accused should receive a lower sentence for the return of most of the loot and detailed confessions. Referring to the terms of the agreement, Kohle now said "that we didn't get what we wanted by any means". Fewer pieces of jewelry were returned than announced and were also damaged, the sword blade is still missing, as are credible confessions. After preliminary discussions in the course of the subsequent agreement between the defense, public prosecutor's office and court, a large part of the loot was returned to the State Art Collections shortly before Christmas 2022, some of it damaged.
The art theft from Saxony's Treasury Museum on November 25, 2019 is considered one of the most spectacular in Germany. According to the indictment, the perpetrators stole 21 pieces of jewelry made of diamonds and brilliants with a total value of over 113 million euros and caused damage of more than one million euros. For a year now, six young men between the ages of 23 and 29 have had to answer for this.
Five defendants admitted in January that they were involved in the coup or the preparation. Another accused denies being a perpetrator with reference to an alibi. From the point of view of the prosecution, there were statements with the aim "that the sum of the expected penalties should be small and bearable for everyone". If these were correct, "we are still looking for two perpetrators, stolen art treasures worth over 63 million euros" and other accomplices and helpers, he said.
