A 28-year-old was sentenced to eight years in prison and a 25-year-old to eight and a half years, both of them for committing multiple burglaries. The trial was a long process because the men were accused of 127 break-ins, and each of them had to be clarified. The judge said it was not easy because the defendants kept changing their versions of what had happened. At the end, there was enough evidence to attribute 63 of the burglaries to the men. They occurred between October and December of 2013. In this time period alone, the worth of stolen goods was 130,000 euros.

In one tragic case, a family from India had saved 6,000 euros for their daughter’s wedding and it was stolen in one of the break-ins. The ritual of the band was always the same; they would hit a home at least 50 kilometers away from a rented apartment in Hagen, where they kept a central command. They came at dusk, one stood watch and two climbed up a rain gutter into the chosen apartment on the second floor of a building. They wore gloves and masks so they would not leave behind DNA.

When their 22-year-old accomplices were arrested in the middle of December 2013, the two older men continued stealing. Police took in the 28-year-old in Remscheid on December 30 and let him go again. He moved to Finland where he continued burglarizing. The men were caught there, sentenced to several years in prison and then extradited to Bonn to face charges here. The judge expressed an incomprehension for why the police in Germany let the 28-year-old go free. He had already served time in jail in Italy for drug charges and was deported to Albania, forbidden to enter the Shengen Zone.

(Orig. text: Rita Klein)