The Police in Germany, on Tuesday, arrested three suspects for their alleged involvement in Dresden’s Grünes Gewölbe Museum heist in 2019.
Police said the thieves targeted the historic section of the museum, which is divided into two sections. The historic treasure chamber of Augustus II the Strong dating to 1733, and the new section, which displays individual treasures.
The suspects were reported to have forced their way into the Dresden’s Grünes Gewölbe Museum museum, said to be housing one of the most beautiful royal treasures collections in Europe. It is filled with elaborate artworks of gold, silver, gems, enamel, ivory, bronze, and amber, and includes the largest green diamond in the world.
The suspects according to the statement released in 2019 by General Director of Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Marion Ackermann, stole at least three priceless 18th-century jewelry sets. She said the material value was low, but the worth from its historic and cultural value was impossible to gauge.
“We are shocked by the brutality of the burglary,” Ackermann had said then.
The museum’s power supply was said to have been possibly sabotaged by a fire before the break-in. Police said power failure plunged the entire area into darkness, making video analysis difficult.
According to the report by Reuters, Police were searching 18 apartments, garages and vehicles for the jewellery and other evidence including digital data, clothes and tools, mostly in the city’s southern district of Neukoelln, the police force said.
The report stated that a total of 1,638 officers were taking part in the operation that could cause serious traffic disruptions through the day, it added.
Three German people were arrested on suspicion of theft and arson, and will appear before an investigating judge later in the morning, the police said. The force said the arrests took place in different parts of the country, without going into detail.
Security camera footage showed two men breaking into the museum through a grilled window in the early hours of Nov. 25. Officers were on the scene five minutes after the alarm sounded, but the thieves escaped.
The stolen jewels were worth up to 1 billion euros ($1.19 billion), Bild newspaper reported at the time, without giving a source. It said a nearby electricity junction box had been set on fire, cutting the power supply to the whole area before the heist.