A German who served time for a high-profile kidnapping is convicted over armed robberies

BERLIN (AP) — A German man who served prison time for a high-profile 1996 kidnapping has been convicted of robbery and attempted murder on Thursday for his alleged role in a string of armed robberies in Germany in 2018 and 2019. The Cologne state court on Thursday sentenced Thomas Drach to 15 years in prison. The court found that Drach participated in three robberies of cash transporters in Cologne and Frankfurt and in two of those cases fired at the cash carriers, wounding them. His participation in another robbery, in Limburg, couldn’t be proven. Drach rejected the accusations during the trial, which opened nearly two years ago.