Thursday, September 2, 2010

A suspected jewel thief believed to belong to the notorious Pink Panther gang, thought to be behind  Dubai’s biggest jewellery heist, has been told he must serve jail time in Cyprus before being extradited to Spain.

Police captured Rifat Hadz-iahmetovic, a 41-year-old Montenegrin, last month as he tried to leave the island using a fake Bulgarian passport. He was jailed yesterday by Larnaca district court for nine months after he was found guilty of travelling on forged documents.

“The court agreed on his extradition to Spain, but only after serving his prison time in Cyprus for circulating fake documents,” police inspector Christos Andreou said. He said the attorney general could commute his sentence to fast-track the extradition, but that the defence could appeal against such a decision.

Hadziahmetovic was arrested on March 18 at Larnaca airport. He denies any connection with the gang which is believed to be responsible for the robbery at the Graff jewellery store in Wafi City

on April 15, 2007, when thieves escaped with more than dhs14 million of diamonds and watches.

The Pink Panthers, a mysterious group of Balkan gangsters, are thought to have pulled off a series of  daring  robberies at exclusive addresses over the past decade.

Senior police investigators from the UAE, Europe and Japan met in Monaco this month in the hunt for the gang.

Interpol established a special Pink Panther task force in July 2007 to coordinate the search for the gang, blamed for 120 armed robberies and the theft of millions of dirhams in luxury goods from around the globe.

Police say their crimes are meticulously planned and carried out with ruthless professionalism rather than with the panache of the jewel thief of the comedy movies after which the gang was named.