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Reemtsma kidnapper Thomas Drach in the Cologne district court
Photo: Thilo Schmuelgen / REUTERS
Reemtsma kidnapper Thomas Drach is said to have admitted to three robberies in conversation with another prisoner in custody.
This emerges from an application by the defense attorney for Drach's co-defendant.
Drach is charged in the ongoing proceedings – for attempted murder, particularly serious robbery and violation of the War Weapons Control Act.
He is said to have attacked four money transporters in Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and in Limburg in Hesse and shot and seriously injured a money messenger.
The co-defendant is his alleged accomplice.
With the application, his defense attorney wants to achieve, among other things, that the fellow prisoner will not be questioned as a witness as early as next Monday, as the court intended.
The justification for the application shows that the prosecution witness and Drach are said to have met and talked to each other during a leisure activity as pre-trial detainees in the correctional facility in the Ossendorf district of Cologne.
In the conversation, both men are said to have given information about their criminal experiences.
Drach is said to have said in the course of the conversation that the allegations against him were "correct except for one," as the application said.
In 1996, Drach kidnapped the heir to the Hamburg tobacco dynasty Reemtsma, Jan Philipp Reemtsma, and later released him for ransom.
He was sentenced to more than 14 years in prison for the crime.
At the beginning of 2021 he was arrested in the Netherlands on suspicion of the robberies that are now being charged.
ala/dpa