Remmo clan is regarded as one of Berlin’s most notorious organized crime gangs linked to ‘$1.2billion’ Dresden art heist

Five members of the ‘Arab mafia’ crime clan are suspected of carrying out last year’s Green Vault heist

Clan has previously stolen a giant gold coin and blown up a bank in £8m raid

Family patriarchs moved from Turkey and war-torn Lebanon during the 1980s 

The Dresden’s state art collection is estimated to be worth up to $1.2billion

Bashir Remmo and Rabih Remmo were among three people arrested on Tuesday over last year’s jewel heist in Dresden

Prosecutors did not initially name the three German citizens arrested, but a spokesman confirmed they are members of the Remmo family

German authorities are also hunting another two suspects, 21-year-old twins Abdul Majed Remmo and Mohammed Remmo, over the Dresden heist

All five are accused of ‘serious gang robbery and two counts of arson

The German crime family linked to last year’s spectacular art heist in Dresden is one of Berlin’s most notorious clans with a long record of gang violence and infamous crimes to its name.  
 Police raided 18 locations in Tuesday’s coordinated early morning police action including apartments, shops and garages in Neukölln, Schöneberg, Kreuzberg, Treptow, Reinickendorf and Charlottenburg.
According to police, three suspects, two aged 23 and one 26-year-old have been arrested.
The suspects reportedly, are members of the Remmo family, regarded as one of the most dangerous players in the so-called ‘Arab mafia’ in Berlin, is in the spotlight once again after five of its members were named as suspects in last November’s Green Vault burglary.
Three Remmo suspects were arrested for robbery and arson in a massive police raid on Tuesday while two others, twin brothers Mohamed and Abdul Majed Remmo, are wanted on the same charges. 

After Remmo family patriarchs moved to Europe from war-torn Lebanon in the 1980s, the clan first came to police attention following German reunification, beginning with the murder of a restaurant owner in 1992.  
Since then, their series of eye-catching raids has included the theft of a $3.8million [£3million] giant gold coin from a Berlin museum and a $10.6million [£8million] bank robbery in Berlin which ended in the branch blowing up. 
The long list of crimes has led to numerous Remmo family members being jailed and some of their properties being seized – but their crime spree has not been halted.

The Remmo family comes from an ethnic group called the Mhallami, who mainly live in Turkey and Lebanon. 
Hundreds of thousands of Turks emigrated to West Germany for work after World War II, while Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war sent some people fleeing to Europe. 

These included the Remmos, who settled in Berlin and first attracted the attention of authorities following the fatal shooting of the Yugoslav restaurant owner in 1992.
Two brothers were blamed for the killing and a raid of their apartment uncovered heroin as well as a supply of blank Lebanese birth certificates.  

The family has built up quite a top-tier crime record for themselves, but in their early years, Remmo clan members were frequently arrested and jailed for drug dealing, theft and handling stolen goods.
On one occasion, a prosecutor pleaded with the mother of some of the criminals to make them see the light, but she told him: ‘Prison makes a man’. 
While some Remmo relatives have pursued legitimate careers, others became involved in increasingly violent crimes as the years went on.  .
A Berlin bank was blown up during an £8million robbery by the Remmo clan in 2014.
A 100 kilogram gold coin, known as the Big Maple Leaf and worth around $3.8million, was stolen from a Berlin museum in 2017 and two Remmo family members were convicted over their role in the heist, earlier this year 

Berlin has sometimes seen violent clashes between Remmo gangsters and rival clans which have ended in stabbings and shootings. One family member, Nidal Remmo, was shot dead in 2018. 
Another Remmo relative was accused of clubbing a man to death with a baseball bat in 2017, but was found not guilty last year in a verdict which prosecutors are appealing to a higher court. 
There were ugly scenes during the hearing as clan boss Issa Remmo, the father of the defendant, had to be wrestled away after rushing into the courtroom. 

One of the family’s most spectacular raids came in 2014 when a gang of robbers stormed the safe deposits of a Berlin bank and stole around $10.6million worth of cash, jewelry and gold bars.
The burglars poured petrol on the floor to cover their traces, causing an explosion which nearly destroyed the entire bank. 
DNA evidence eventually led to the conviction of Toufic Remmo, who was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2015. 
Three years later, German police and prosecutors seized 77 properties worth $14.6million which were allegedly bought with the proceeds from the robbery.

Some of the properties were officially owned by a 19-year-old whose only declared income was state welfare payments.   
By the time of those raids in 2018, the family was already in the spotlight again over the theft of a giant $3.8million The 100 kilogram gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum. 
Stolen in 2017, the commemorative Big Maple Leaf coin has never been recovered and authorities suspect it was cut up into smaller pieces. 
Two cousins, Ahmed and Wissam Remmo, were convicted and imprisoned along with a friend who worked as a security guard at the museum, while another Remmo relative was found not guilty. 

Prosecutors said the burglars had broken in through a window, smashed a glass case with an axe and used a wheelbarrow and rope to hoist the coin into a car.
The suspects were arrested by German special police commandos after investigators searched dozens of properties and recovered a ladder and wheelbarrow by railway tracks near the museum. 
In 2018 there was an attack on a money transporter at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. The high security door was pried open with professional tools. In a 2019 one of the Remmos was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for another heist in Erlangen 2019 which netted some of the high-tech tools and devices used in the Green Vault jewel heist.
Previously, at least five of these devices, each worth $11,800 [€10,000], had been stolen from fire department in Berlin.
The decades-long Remmo crime spree has long raised questions about how authorities could let them so brazenly flout the law for so long in a generally fairly low-crime country. 
German authorities would ideally like to deport or extradite some of the gangsters to Lebanon, but some of them have no citizenship there.  

Now, the family is under suspicion again over last year’s raid at the Green Vault, which was established in 1723 and contains the treasury of Augustus of Saxony. 
The robbers launched their brazen raid last November after causing a power cut and breaking in through a window before stealing priceless 18th-century jewelry and other valuables. 
The items stolen included a sword whose hilt is encrusted with nine large and 770 smaller diamonds, and a shoulder piece which contains a 49-carat white diamond.
The Dresden’s state art collection is estimated to be worth up to $1.2billion.
The searches did not immediately turn up any of the missing items. The fate of most of the stolen items remains subject of speculation. Conventional wisdom is that the thieves have not yet been able to dispose of the stolen art because they are unique items.
However, according to the Israeli security company CGI, which is tasked with investigating the case, apparently some of the stolen pieces of jewelry from the Green Vault were offered for sale on the darknet in early 2020.
Two diamond sets from the booty appeared on the Darknet for the asking price of $10.7million [€9million] in Bitcoins.
The pieces of jewelry offered were identified as coming from the Saxon White Diamonds and the Polish White Eagle Order.

Prosecutors did not initially name the three German citizens arrested, but a spokesman confirmed they are members of the Remmo family.
They are also hunting another two suspects, 21-year-old twins Abdul Majed Remmo and Mohammed Remmo, over the Dresden heist.
All five are accused of ‘serious gang robbery and two counts of arson,’ said Dresden prosecutors.
Berlin’s top security official, Andreas Geisel, said the latest raids on Tuesday should serve as a warning to organized crime families in general.
‘Nobody should believe that he set himself above the rules of the state,’ Geisel said.