Twin super thief makes the police helpless

Berlin’s Kaufhaus des Westens (or KaDeWe) is a sprawling department store that opened for business in 1907 and quickly became a symbol of Berlin’s elite lifestyle.

In November 1943, an Allied bomber crashed into the building. This dilapidated structure was used by the German Army as a defensive post during the Battle of Berlin in 1945. After the war, it was rebuilt and reopened in 1956.

The 7-storey neoclassical building was built with a store area of ​​more than 60,000 m2, ranked second in Europe after Harrod’s in London, selling clothes, electronics, furniture, food, attracting up to 50,000 people. shop every day.

At dawn on Sunday, January 25, 2009, KaDeWe opened late. The only people present at the giant shopping mall at the moment are just the night shift security guards, sitting in a room with a surveillance camera screen.

If they had been paying closer attention, they might have noticed something odd: a knotted rope ladder descending from the top of a monitor screen. When it stopped hovering on the floor, the figure of a masked man slid down, followed by two others.

Their faces were completely obscured by ski masks, and they were all wearing gloves. The three burly men moved cautiously around the rows of display cases. It seems they know exactly where to set up the motion sensors and have mapped out safe routes to travel.

They stopped in front of a Christ jewelry store and began to pry open the cabinets, filling their backpacks with some of the most expensive gems and watches in the entire store. Again, they did this carefully without any alarm bells sounding.

But it seems one backpack is not enough. After each person had filled their backpacks, they climbed up the rope ladder again to place the loot outside, then returned for a second round of loot.

When the second bags were full, the three men climbed back up the steps, and disappeared before the security guards noticed an unusual rope ladder dangling from the center of the surveillance frame. The theft damage was estimated at $6.8 million.

KaDeWe is a symbol of the city. The fact that daring crooks can break in, steal valuables and escape amidst the dense security system is unacceptable.

A KaDeWe spokesman said it was an unprecedented heist of scale and daring, and that it was “incomparable” to anything. The national press also named it the most spectacular robbery in the history of post-war Germany. The police, therefore, were under great pressure to solve the case.

Store owner Christ also offers a 10,000 euro prize for any information that could lead to the recovery of the stolen goods. Clever thieves do not leave fingerprints and identification is difficult due to tight masks. But there is no “perfect crime”.

With all the ingenuity and luck, the three men still made the fatal mistake of dropping a glove at the scene, in the same place as the rope ladder. Police lab technicians analyzed every millimeter of the glove and recovered a sweat sample from the inside.

Examining the DNA data, the police received double what they expected: Up to two people in the criminal record completely matched the DNA. They are an identical twin: Abbas and Hassan O.

Both have criminal records, having committed crimes in the past with identical looks. By this time, both are 27 years old and are very adept at “shutting their mouths” when the police arrive on the doorstep.

Exactly 20 years before the KaDeWe theft, German officials denied the twins’ asylum applications. The two brothers were born in 1982 and came to Germany at the age of one. After their asylum applications were denied in 1989, each was allowed to stay, but with regular renewal, for 20 years.

On February 5, 2009, nearly two weeks after the KaDeWe break-in, Hassan O. applied for residency, and Abbas received a deportation order two days earlier.

Investigators viewing the surveillance video felt absolutely certain that “66.66%” of this was the culprit, but could not do anything about the remaining “33.33”.

On March 18 of the same year, before the case was brought to trial, the charges against the two brothers were dropped and they were released. The judge said: “From the evidence available, we can infer that at least one of you was involved in the theft, but it is not yet possible to identify who.”

The public is now torn in debate: Is this a failure of the justice system or a reasonable prudence of the law.

Criminal law expert Hans-Ullrich Paeffgen of the University of Bonn said: “Our hands are tied in such a rare case. The law does not allow us to detain someone indefinitely just because he is suspected of committing a crime. This may not happen in other countries. But I would rather live in a country where a guilty person is not convicted for lack of convincing evidence than in one. where innocent people are kept”.

The statute of limitations for robbery is only 10 years in Germany, meaning anyone involved will not be prosecuted after 2019. During those 10 years, warrants for the arrest of the two brothers were suspended. As a result, the police can’t even track their bank accounts or communicate by phone.

In a statement issued through another family member, the two thieves said they were “grateful” to the legal system.

Hai Thu (According to Spiegel, Owlcation)