The district court of Osnabrück has sentenced two men from the Netherlands to long prison terms for blowing up ATMs in Germany.

The 29 and 36-year-old defendants were found guilty on Friday of having been involved in the preparation of a total of six crimes in several federal states, the court said.

The younger of the two had procured explosives, among other things.

He was sentenced to three years and six months in prison.

The older man had rented getaway cars from rental car companies.

Since he already had a relevant criminal record and was therefore wearing an ankle bracelet at the time of the offences, he received a sentence of seven and a half years.

The verdict is not yet legally binding.

Both confessed to the crime

The two Dutchmen had made confessions during the proceedings, but according to a court spokesman, they did not comment on their clients and accomplices.

The organizers in the Netherlands as well as those who then blew open the ATMs in the German banks are still unknown.

According to the court, the accused received 200 or 300 euros for their services for each successful blast.

The six blasts that have now been charged took place between February and November 2020 in Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt.

The Dutch gang stole between 13,000 and 104,000 euros in cash.

Because they were disturbed during the blast in Nittenau, Bavaria, the perpetrators fled there without taking anything.

After a blast in Elmshorn, two of the perpetrators were arrested by the police and 128,000 euros in loot was confiscated.

The court's judgment made the fact that a fire broke out after an ATM in a bank branch was blown up on the ground floor of a multi-storey building in Schüttorf, Lower Saxony, aggravating the situation.

In an apartment above, a family with a seven-year-old son was trapped by the flames and smoke.

They only survived because the fire brigade was able to get them to safety with a turntable ladder.

A couple in the neighboring building also had to be rescued.

The older defendant was also sentenced to more than six years in prison in 2017 by the Hagen Regional Court for blowing up an ATM.

After his early release from a Dutch prison, he wore an electronic ankle bracelet during the crimes - which also made it easier to investigate him.

The two Dutchmen were arrested as part of an operation in September 2021 involving investigative authorities in Utrecht, Osnabrück, Europol and Eurojust.

A kind of training center for automated demolitions was also discovered in the Netherlands (you can read detailed research on this here).

The President of the Osnabrück Police Headquarters, Michael Maßmann, said on Friday: “The verdict is clear.

Word of this sensitive sentence will certainly get around among criminals as well.” From December there will be a central office in Osnabrück to combat ATM blasts in Lower Saxony.

Despite all the investigative successes, the security authorities have so far not been able to contain the dangerous phenomenon.

Last year, the German police registered 392 attempted and completed ATM demolitions, only slightly fewer cases than in 2020 (414 cases).

In 2022, the number could even rise to a new high.

In Lower Saxony, for example, the ATM bombers struck 53 times by the beginning of November - only twice less than in the whole of last year.

The State Criminal Police Office in North Rhine-Westphalia also reported record numbers in the summer.

In the two federal states, a particularly large number of ATMs are blown up, since the majority of the crimes are committed by networks from the Netherlands.

Because the perpetrators are increasingly using solid explosives instead of gas mixtures, the damage and the danger emanating from the explosions are increasing.

Just recently, Europol also warned that attacks on ATMs in Europe were increasing drastically and were becoming ever more dangerous.

The police authority is very concerned about the increasing violence, said Europol spokeswoman Claire Georges at the end of October.

"Increasingly, extremely heavy explosives are being used that could even collapse buildings and kill innocent people."