Three arrested over ‘biggest art heist in modern history’

Three people were arrested on suspicion of staging a spectacular jewel heist at one of Germany’s most treasured museums, after police raided apartments across Berlin early on Tuesday.

Thieves forced their way into Dresden’s Green Vault Museum last year and got away with at least three sets of early 18th century jewellery thought to be worth up to one billion Euros (around £900m).

Security camera footage showed two men breaking into the museum through a grilled window in the early hours of 25 November. Although officers were on the scene five minutes after the alarm sounded, the thieves had caused enough disruption to escape.

A nearby electricity junction box had been set on fire – cutting the power supply to the whole area just before the heist, the Bild newspaper reported at the time.  

Three people identified only as German citizens, two aged 23 and one 26, were arrested on suspicion of theft and arson. They will appear before an investigating judge later on Tuesday, police said.

Police officials said they were still looking for two others in connection with the theft, wanted on the same charges – identifying them as Abdul Majed Remmo, 21, and Mohamed Remmo, 21.

The focus was reportedly on a known crime family, and Berlin’s top security official Andreas Geisel said the raids should serve as a warning to organised crime. “Nobody should believe that he set himself above the rules of the state,” he said.

Berlin police searched 18 apartments, garages and vehicles for the jewellery and other evidence including digital data, clothes and tools, mostly in the southern district of Neukoelln, the city’s force said.

The searches did not immediately turn up any of the missing treasures. “We’d have to have a lot of luck in order to find them a year after the crime,” Dresden police spokesman Thomas Geithner told reporters.

A total of 1,638 officers were taking part in Tuesday’s operation, with police warning that ongoing searches could cause serious traffic disruptions throughout the day.

November’s theft at the Green Vault Museum was described as the “biggest art heist in modern history” by German media. The thieves escaped in an Audi S6, which was set on fire in an underground car park before a second car – a Mercedes disguised as a taxi – was used in the successful getaway.

The museum’s collection of treasures was brought together in the 18th century by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and later King of Poland, who commissioned ever more brilliant jewellery as part of his rivalry with France's King Louis XIV.

One of its best-known pieces – the 41-carat Dresden “Green Diamond” – was away on loan at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art at the time of the break-in.

The treasures of the Green Vault survived Allied bombing raids in World War II, only to be carted off as war booty by the Soviet Union. They were only returned to Dresden in 1958.