Defendant pleads guilty to Ginza jewelry heist
The Japan Times, Japan
BELGRADE (Kyodo) One of the two defendants in a 2004 Tokyo heist pleaded guilty Monday to robbing a Ginza jewelry shop of Â¥3.5 billion worth of merchandise but claimed he did it at the prompting of the shop’s personnel, who offered an award of $100,000.
Djordjije Rasovic, 42, admitted to the charge for the first time since the trial on the high-profile burglary case started in a Belgrade court in April 2006
Rasovic said he acted alone after the shop’s personnel solicited him to carry out the crime. However, both the court and prosecutors doubt the credibility of his testimony, sources said.
Rasovic denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of the 12 stolen pieces of jewelry, among them the 125-carat diamond necklace Comtesse de Vendome worth about ¥3 billion.
Rasovic said none of the three other suspects took part in the March 2004 robbery.
Until Monday, Rasovic had refused to speak in court.
The other defendant, Snezana Panajotovic, 24, said she was in Tokyo and near the posh Ginza jewelry shop at the time of the robbery but denied any connection with the crime.
Rasovic and Panajotovic, both put on an international wanted list, were arrested in 2005 in Serbia and Montenegro. Their trial started in Belgrade after Serbia and Japan reached an agreement under which Serbia conducts the trial on behalf of Japan, as the two countries do not have an agreement on extraditing criminals.
The Special Belgrade Court decided to continue the proceedings without inviting new witnesses as the testimony of the diamond shop employees had already been presented to the court during earlier proceedings.
The court is expected to announce the verdict in early October. If found guilty, the two defendants could get up to 15 years in prison.
Two other members of the group have yet to be tried. One of them, the leader of a crime syndicate, Aleksandar Radulovic, is in prison in Denmark for other crimes and would be tried when and if extradited to Serbia.
The court in Belgrade has no information on the whereabouts of the fourth suspect, a British woman.
