The confectionery fair started in Cologne on Monday, despite Corona, a few thousand visitors will come by. However, traffic delays are imminent on Tuesday on the other side of the Rhine, in the south-west, because one of Germany’s most notorious criminals is expected there. “Please allow for a longer journey time when you arrive because of any roadblocks,” recommends the reporters of the spokesman for the Cologne Regional Court, before whom Thomas Drach will have to answer as of February 1st.
The highest level of security applies to the courthouse, and reporters and spectators are strictly controlled. Drach will be flown in with a helicopter from the prison in Cologne-Ossendorf or driven up in a car, special forces will accompany him, and police officers will guard the neighborhood. From 9:15 a.m. the accused is to sit in the dock in Room 112, and that for 52 days before a judgment is scheduled for the end of September, another in a lifetime as a delinquent.
Robbery of four armored vehicles
Thomas Drach, of course one thinks primarily of Jan Philipp Reemtsma. In March 1996, Drach and his accomplices kidnapped the Hamburg philologist, social researcher and heir to a tobacco dynasty, for which he was convicted 21 years ago. This time, the Cologne public prosecutor’s office accuses him of attempted murder, aggravated robbery, dangerous bodily harm, violations of the War Weapons Control Act and the Weapons Act, as well as forgery and arson. Apparently Drach needed money again.
In Limburg, Frankfurt and Cologne, he is said to have attacked four money transports in 2018 and 2019, three times armed with an assault rifle AK-47, once with a revolver. According to the indictment, he shot twice at the respective employee of the security company and injured both of them life-threateningly on the thigh, they had to undergo emergency surgery and are suffering from the consequences. Apparently, a shot also hit a passing car and just missed a child. In total, Drach captured 89,850 euros, 76,175 euros, 400 euros and 58,600 euros. A 52-year-old Dutchman is also accused of using stolen cars and then setting them on fire. Drach, now 60 years old, was arrested in February 2021 in the Netherlands.
“Getting Older and Impatient and Dangerous”
It’s the continuation of a criminal career. The son of a corporate executive and a secretary was first caught burglarizing a car when he was 13. At 18 he robbed a supermarket. In his early 20s, he and his younger brother ended up in cells after they crashed their car through the window of a Cologne savings bank in 1981 and demanded money at the counter. When Reemtsma was kidnapped in April 1996, the family then paid 30 million Deutschmarks, after 33 days of martyrdom Jan Philipp Reemtsma was released.
At the end of March 1998, Drach was arrested in Buenos Aires, where he was attending a concert by the Rolling Stones wanted to visit, as he had told a former fellow prisoner in wiretapped telephone conversations. In 2001, a Hamburg criminal court sentenced him to a long prison term, and he was released in 2013. There is no trace of large parts of the ransom, investigators found a good 800,000 euros in Uruguayan lockers. Drach had lived luxuriously in the jet-set seaside resort of Punta del Este in the South American country. In 2001, the Hamburg Regional Court imposed a prison sentence of 14 years and six months for kidnapping by extortion, and Drach was released in 2013. He spent the eight years before he was arrested again, apart from his alleged robberies, in Spain and in his home town of Cologne, among other places.
The question there is now whether he will ever be allowed to leave prison again after the next verdict. Drach is “getting older and more impatient and more dangerous,” Reemtsma said in an interview when Drach was arrested again last year. The Cologne regional court considers increased caution to be appropriate.