Lucerne jewelry robber protects suspected accomplice
Published: Tuesday, Jan 23rd 2024, 17:21
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The trial of six suspects involved in a jewelry robbery worth 20 million francs began on Tuesday at the Lucerne Criminal Court. The prosecution's claim that the crime was planned and carried out jointly was disputed.
The robbery at the Gübelin store on Lucerne's Schwanenplatz was committed on October 26, 2019. Two masked men forced their way into the store at 8 a.m. through the electronically secured staff entrance. One tied up and guarded the three female employees present. The other, who acted as the ringleader and was in possession of a pistol, emptied the safes.
According to the indictment, the perpetrators fled with four bags full of jewelry. The ringleader hid the loot in a forest in Littau and then in a nearby apartment. A day later, the handcuffs clicked there and further arrests followed.
The public prosecutor's office requested prison sentences of between seven and eleven years for the 32 to 61-year-old men and an additional 15-year ban from the country for the four without Swiss passports.
Credible witness
For a seventh man - the one who acted as an accomplice in the robbery - there is a separate and abbreviated trial. The Montenegrin is the only fully confessed person and an important witness. His statements are "credible and comprehensible", said the public prosecutor. Such a story could not be made up out of thin air.
The public prosecutor assumes that the men organized and carried out the robbery together and based on a division of labour. One of them, who worked for Gübelin, is said to have provided the information required for the crime and one is said to have hired the accomplice, while others are said to have provided their apartment or brothel as a safe house or organized chauffeur services.
A 46-year-old defendant admitted in court that he had carried out the robbery with a pistol and had been in command. However, he had no inside information from a Gübelin employee. He had found out the code to open the staff entrance with the help of a secretly installed camera. According to his statements, the other co-defendants had known little or nothing about the crime he had planned or only found out about it afterwards and helped him.
"Professional criminal"
According to the indictment, the 46-year-old had already robbed the same jewelry store in 2017 and made a haul of 3 million francs. The accused denied this. In Serbia, he was also serving a prison sentence of several years for robbery. According to his own statements, he ran a farm in Montenegro. He was a professional criminal, said the public prosecutor and demanded a sentence of eleven years.
A 57-year-old defendant denied the public prosecutor's accusation that, as a jeweller, he was the main organizer of the robbery. It was only true that he had organized and paid for the ticket to Switzerland for the accomplice. He explained that he was arrested in the apartment where the loot was hidden by the fact that he was a guest there. He had wanted to buy a car in Switzerland, said the North Macedonian. However, there were only photos of jewelry and not of cars on his cell phone, said the public prosecutor.
According to the public prosecutor, the owner of the apartment - where all the threads came together - had slipped into the matter unintentionally. The robber had suddenly turned up at his house with the loot. The 50-year-old Montenegrin denied having met the Gübelin employee in Banja Luka to prepare the crime. He could meet him in Lucerne, Emmen or in church, there was no reason to travel to Bosnia.
No understanding for accusation
Other co-accused denied direct involvement in the crime, although chat logs prove this according to the public prosecutor's office. A 32-year-old Swiss man, who had provided the brothel he ran as accommodation for the alleged perpetrators, said he could not understand the accusation.
A 38-year-old Swiss-born Bosnian made only a few statements. When asked why he had 15,000 francs with him when he was arrested in the apartment where the loot had been deposited, he said that he had wanted to pay rent. When asked why he wanted to do this in cash, he replied: "How else am I supposed to pay?"
Gübelin's former employee, who is said to have provided the information required for the robbery, said: "I was not involved in any way". The 61-year-old Swiss national said that the criminal proceedings were a great injustice that was affecting his health.
For the public prosecutor, however, there was no doubt about the guilt of all six men. He said that the investigation into this "spectacular multi-million robbery" had been intensive and comprehensive.
The trial will continue on Wednesday with the pleadings of the defense attorneys.
©Keystone/SDA
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