Image of a jewelry room in the Green Vault in Dresden, eastern Germany.
German police arrested 22-year-old Abdul Majed R. in Berlin on Monday, considered one of the suspects in the gang who stole three sets of 18th-century jewelry from the Green Vault of the Dresden royal palace in November 2019. The man was captured in an apartment in the Neukölln neighborhood, south of the German capital and transferred to Dresden, in Saxony, for questioning, according to the Prosecutor's Office.
The police believe that Majed could be the fifth member of the group that stormed the royal palace of the German city.
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Diamonds, a white powder, a burned-out car and a juicy reward
The other four individuals who allegedly participated in the assault were arrested between November and December 2020 in raids involving more than a thousand agents from eight German states. Police are still searching for the missing jewels. One of the iconic objects in the vault, the 41-carat Green Diamond, was accidentally saved by being loaned to the Metropolitan Museum in New York when the theft occurred.
The thieves broke a window to enter and the glass of a large display case, from which they took the gems. Both facts were picked up by the palace security cameras. Shortly before, a small fire near the museum had cut off the power, so the criminals were able to move around protected by darkness. In the baroque room a royal collection of jewelery from the 18th century was exhibited. The researchers estimate that the theft could affect a hundred pieces divided into three sets. They are brooches, buttons, medals and all kinds of jewelry decorated with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires.
The Green Vault Collection was formed in the 18th century by Augustus II the Strong, Prince of Saxony and King of Poland (1670-1733). It survived the Allied bombing during World War II, which destroyed some of the chambers that make up the compound, and also the confiscation by the Red Army, which returned the jewels to Saxony (then part of East Germany) in 1958.