Reemtsma kidnapping

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During the Reemtsma kidnapping , the Hamburg patron , philologist and social researcher Jan Philipp Reemtsma was imprisoned for 33 days in 1996 for the purpose of blackmail . He was released against payment of a million dollar ransom. The perpetrators - Thomas Drach and three accomplices - were sentenced to long prison terms.

Sequence of events

Reemtsma was overpowered on March 25, 1996 at around 8:20 p.m. on his property on Krumdal Street in Hamburg-Blankenese . A letter weighing down with a hand grenade with a ransom demand of 20 million Deutschmarks was found. The victim was imprisoned in the basement of a house in Garlstedt , around 90 km away. At least two attempts to transfer the money failed because the perpetrators suspected the presence of the police. They took the failed attempts as an opportunity to increase the ransom demand to 30 million marks. The relatives of Jan Philipp Reemtsma organized the finally successful handover of the money with the help of the Hamburg pastor Christian Arndt, the Kiel sociologist Lars Clausen and the Hamburg social worker Michael Herrmann without the knowledge of the police. Herrmann rented a car with which Arndt and Clausen were guided to Krefeld by the kidnappers using a mobile phone . There they were instructed to leave the car for some time and to move away. Meanwhile, the kidnappers appropriated the ransom (15 million D-Marks and 12.5 million Swiss francs) and drove the car onto a slope, making an immediate pursuit impossible. On April 26, 1996, 43 hours after paying the ransom, Jan Philipp Reemtsma was released unharmed after 33 days of imprisonment in the southern part of Hamburg.

reception

The public did not find out about the kidnapping until after Reemtsma was released. The mostly informed media had kept a news blackout. Reemtsma described his experiences in connection with the crime in his 1997 book Im Keller . Reemtsma's son Johann Scheerer reflected on the kidnapping from the relatives' point of view in his 2018 book We are then probably the relatives. The story of a kidnapping.

Arrests

The main perpetrator, Thomas Drach , was arrested in Argentina in 1998 after his phone calls with an old friend in Germany had been tapped. Two years later he was extradited to Germany. In 2001 Drach was sentenced to 14 years and 6 months in prison. His application for early release two thirds of the time ( Section 57 of the Criminal Code ) was rejected in 2007. He was conditionally released on October 21, 2013.

The three accomplices were also caught and sentenced to between five and ten and a half years in prison. Bernd Dieter Kramer was caught in Santa Rita ( Brazil ) in early November 2006 . In 2014, a man was arrested in Mallorca on charges of blackmailing members of the Frankfurt Hells Angels with his knowledge that they had laundered the ransom money in the red light district.

Wolfgang Koszics , who also belonged to the gang of four, was sentenced in 1997 to ten and a half years in prison. On February 10, 2014 Koszics' body was discovered in the sea in front of the Portuguese Algarve . The Portuguese police assumed a suicide; However, the Hamburg State Criminal Police Office also considered a homicidal offense to be possible and investigated in this direction. In November 2015, the investigations into this case were discontinued because no third party fault could be proven.

The whereabouts of the ransom

15 million Deutschmarks and 12.5 million Swiss francs were paid. Drach's trio of helpers received 5 million Deutschmarks. As a result of money laundering in Eastern Bloc countries, the notes lost up to 75% of their face value. Some of the money also went to friends and lawyers; money was also spent.

In 2013, Drach's last money deposit in a locker in Uruguay was cleared by employees of a security company. It contained $ 459,900. The six million Swiss francs that were still missing have now become worthless, as this is a series that has been withdrawn from payment transactions and can no longer be spent. This could only be exchanged at the Swiss National Bank , but this would be recognized and pursued. According to today's information, there is no more money and Drach is bankrupt.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b track leads to Frankfurt Hells Angels. DPA message. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 13, 2014.
  2. ↑ Password: Ann Kathrin . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1996, p. 22-29 ( Online - Apr. 29, 1996 ).
  3. ↑ Press release ( memento of October 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) of the Hamburg Justice of October 18, 2013 about the conditions (Ref .: 1 Ws 101/13); Vanessa Steinmetz with material from the DPA: Reemtsma kidnappers: Thomas Drach released from prison. In: Spiegel Online , October 21, 2013.
  4. ↑ Dead Reemtsma kidnapper: Was Wolfgang Koszics trapped? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 8, 2015.
  5. Jump up ↑ Death in Portugal: investigation into the death of Reemtsma kidnapper Koszics stopped . In: Spiegel Online , November 10, 2015, accessed on April 23, 2019.
  6. ↑ Per Hinrichs: Thomas Drach: Jan Philipp Reemtsma's kidnappers is broke. In: welt.de . March 6, 2016, accessed October 7, 2018 .