TWINS WHO ARE SUSPECTS OF A $6,800,000 JEWELRY HEIST RELEASED ON BIZARRE REASON
The reason behind the release of identical twins who were implicated in a heist is absurd.
Despite strong evidence, police officers locked the two up and they left as free men. Two 27-year-old men in Germany experienced something practically unheard of. A variety of fashion items valued at $6.8 million were taken in this actual jewellery heist that took place in January 2009.
Three masked men were seen performing an action that you could only imagine occurring in Oceans 11 at the upscale department store Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin. CCTV captured the burglars slipping through the building's security system and entering through lengths of rope. However, DNA was left behind even though every man wore gloves.
One of the men removed the thin latex gloves they were wearing and threw them next to a rope ladder.
Police collected a drop of perspiration from this, and using its DNA, they were able to identify two men.
The identical twins, Hassan and Abbas O (whose full names could not be disclosed due to German privacy laws) were the match. The two men were arrested on February 11 in a gambling arcade after police searched the sweat drop through their crime database and discovered that they already had criminal records that included theft and fraud.
The two were arrested on a burglary charge that carries a ten-year prison sentence if convicted, but due to their unique circumstances, they were never put on trial. They simply were unable to identify which brother was the thief. Peter M. Schneider, a forensic expert from the University of Cologne, told Time that they simply cannot confirm it with certainty. "We can conclude from the evidence that at least one of the brothers participated in the crime, but it has not been possible to identify which one," he stated. Identical twins are produced when a single sperm fertilizes a single egg, which divides in half to create two embryos, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.
As a result, "identical twins are almost always of the same sex and share the same genomes."
The evidence could not identify either brother as the culprit because 99.99% of their DNA was identical. They had to release both of them because German law prohibits incarceration because someone is a suspect. The men can therefore go about their lives as usual.
"We are proud of the German legal system and grateful," the twins told Berlin's daily Der Tagesspiegel via a family member, expressing their belief that justice was done.
As long as it falls within the 10-year statute of limitations for burglary cases, police may issue another arrest warrant if they discover new evidence.