Britt Jones
A pair of identical twins were released after being implicated in a heist, and the reason is crazy.
The two walked away as free men after having been locked up by police officers even though there was compelling evidence.
It’s almost unheard of - and yet it happened to two 27-year-old men in Germany.
This real-life jewelry robbery happened in January 2009 and saw the thieves steal a variety of fashion pieces worth $6.8 million.
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It all took place at a luxury department store called Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin and saw three masked men carrying out something that you could only imagine happening in Oceans 11.
CCTV picked up the thieves sliding down lengths of ropes into the building, completely bypassing the building’s security system.
But even though all of the men wore gloves, DNA was left behind.
These men were wearing thin latex gloves, which one of the men took off and discarded next to a rope ladder.
From this, police were able to gather a drop of sweat, implicating two men with its DNA analysis.
It was the identical twins Hassan and Abbas O (German privacy laws meant they couldn't be named in full) who came up as a match.
After police entered the sweat drop through their crime database, they found out that the two men already had criminal records which included fraud and theft and arrested them on February 11 in a gambling arcade.
The pair were hauled up on a burglary charge which could see them imprisoned for 10 years if found guilty, but they never made it to trial because of their unusual situation.
They just couldn’t figure out which brother was the robber.
According to Time, Peter M. Schneider, a University of Cologne forensic expert said that it’s just not something they can confirm for certain.
He said: “From the evidence we have, we can deduce that at least one of the brothers took part in the crime, but it has not been possible to determine which one.”
According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, identical twins occur when a single sperm fertilizes a single egg which then splits in half, creating two embryos.
Because of this, ‘identical twins share the same genomes and are nearly always the same sex'.
Because 99.99% of the brothers' DNA was identical, the evidence couldn't pin the crime on either one.
As German law dictates that a person cannot be imprisoned just because they are a suspect, they had to let both of them go.
So, the men are free to live their life as normal.
The twins believe that justice was served and told Berlin’s daily Der Tagesspiegel through a family member: “We are proud of the German legal system and grateful.”
If police are able to find new evidence, then another arrest warrant can be issued, as long as it’s within the statute of limitations for burglary cases (10 years).