Dubai: Three Yugoslav suspects in an audacious raid on Graff jewellery store in Wafi mall will be extradited and handed over to Dubai police, a senior official said.
Known as the Pink Panther robbers, the three fled with jewellery valued at Dh15 million after the daring 2007 robbery.
Major Saeed Abdullah Al Sa'adi, deputy director of the Wanted Persons Department at Dubai Police, said the three prime suspects would be extradited from European countries after serving their jail sentences. One of the suspects is expected to be extradited soon.
Police have recovered the jewellery that was taken from the store.
Two suspects arrested in Dubai a few days after the raid on April 15, 2007, had helped establish the Pink Panther connection. Video footage showed a gang of seven arriving at the mall in two cars and ramming down glass facades of the Graff store before making off with the jewellery.
The entire raid took just one minute and 45 seconds.
The two cars were later found burnt out.
Dubai police said the men belonged to the Pink Panther gang, which has robbed jewellery valued at Dh500 million worldwide. The gang are known to be dangerous diamond thieves and who all hail from the former Yugoslavia. The gang is said to have more than 200 members, many of them well-educated.
The ‘Pink Panther' tag was invented by British investigators after a member of the crime syndicate was found carrying a diamond worth Dh3 million in a jar of face cream, a modus operandi straight out of one of Peter Sellers' Pink Panther movies.
Arrested in Monaco
Two of the prime suspects involved in the Wafi robbery were arrested in 2008 in Monaco on charges of robbery.
One of them, a Bosnian suspect, P.D., who had a Red Interpol Arrest Warrant against his name, was extradited in June 2009 to Liechtenstein because he was wanted in that country. The other Serbian suspect, A.B., was extradited to Switzerland during the same period, said Major Al Sa'adi.
"After they finish their sentences in these countries they will be extradited to Dubai Police. We have recently received their extradition files," he said.
A third Serbian suspect, L.M., who was arrested in Paris in connection with another case, will also be extradited to Dubai. "One of these suspects has a short jail sentence and will be soon extradited to us," Major Al Sa'adi said.
"Their jail terms might take years but eventually we will have them in our custody," he said.
Interpol had earlier noted that investigations and evidence collected on the Pink Panther gang had provided a major breakthrough in the Wafi case. Dubai Police had collated DNA evidence from the burnt-out cars in Dubai.
The Dubai Court of First Instance, in June 2008, sentenced Serb national N.M., 33, to 10 years in jail after he was named as an accomplice to an unidentified number of fugitives in the raid in April 2007. He will be deported after serving his punishment.
