Six ATM bombers from the Netherlands and Morocco were sentenced on Thursday by a court in Frankfurt to prison terms ranging from five to nearly fourteen years for ATM bombings in western Germany.
The men, aged between 26 and 32, were on trial for seven ATM bombings in 2022 and 2023. They made off with more than 870,000 euros. The damage caused was almost three times as high, at over 2.5 million euros.
With a prison sentence of thirteen years and nine months for one of the ATM bombers, these are the “severest penalties ever imposed on ATM bombers in Germany,” writes the local medium Frankfurter Rundschau.
According to the court, blowing up ATMs has been punished too leniently for far too long. “They are not rogues, as the Dutch police glossed over it, but they are criminals,” the court said in its judgment.
Prosecutor wanted to prosecute for attempted murder
The prosecutor wanted three men to be convicted of attempted murder, because some ATM bombings were so violent that the perpetrators took the risk of innocent bystanders being killed.
It was the first time that a public prosecutor charged a gang of ATM bombers with attempted murder, but the judge did not agree.
Dutch ATM bombers are more likely to strike abroad. This is because there are not so many ATMs in the Netherlands anymore. In addition, ATMs are often closed at night or are placed in stores.
Ina van Heerwaarden-Smidt, spokesperson for the police management, previously told NU.nl that Dutch security measures also play a role. “Preventive measures make money unusable after an ATM bombing,” Van Heerwaarden-Smidt said in this article. “For example, ‘gluing’: banknotes then stick together after an ATM bombing.”