system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[harry potter] Why didn't Voldemort go to the ministry to get the prophecy when he could enter so easily and be unseen at the end of Order of the Phoenix?

 

several Ministry-employed Death Eaters enter the Department of Mysteries, so did a couple of Azkaban-escapees, notably the powerful witch Bellatrix Lestrange.

So if Bellatrix Lestrange and her husband were able to secretly enter the Department of Mysteries undetected, what was stopping Voldemort from doing so?
gpt
Only those who the prophecy mentioned can remove the prophecy from the shelf, that that means only Harry Potter and Voldemort.  He cannot just send one of his Death Eaters to do it.

Voldemort at that time was still trying to hide the fact that he has returned while he was still gathering his forces.  Showing up at the Ministry to remove it himself, if it was witnessed by any of the many employees there, or if he left any trace that could have been linked to him, then the world will know he had returned, as was what happened at the end of the book.  So that leaves Harry the only one who could do it.  

This is why Voldemort had to trick Harry into getting the prophecy off the shelf while sending his Death Eaters to fetch it from him.  Some of the Death Eaters are employees themselves so they have an alibi for being there.  As for the others, it can just be explained as the escaped convicts acting on their own, just as the public believed Sirius was in the third book.  It was only when the Death Eaters failed so badly that he risked losing most of his more powerful followers, that he was forced to show up to rescue them.