Jewel thieves in brazen Dutch art fair heist

MAASTRICHT

Flat-cap wearing armed robbers staged a brazen daylight raid on an international art fair in the Netherlands on June 28, smashing a jewelry case with a sledgehammer in front of terrified visitors.

Police said they pulled over a car and arrested two Belgians in their twenties after the four smartly dressed thieves held up the TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair) in the southern city of Maastricht.

Dramatic social media images showed the robbers threatening people with what appeared to be handguns before running off with an undisclosed amount of what police called “loot.”

The venue was evacuated but visitors were eventually let back into the fair, which draws tens of thousands of people over several days. No one was hurt, police said.

“A stall was raided, they fled and we started the search,” Wim Coenen, a spokesman for Limburg province police, told AFP. “There were four suspects, two were arrested.”

Dutch media said the display case contained diamond jewelry and other items from London jeweler Symbolic and Chase. There was no comment from the firm.

Police confirmed in a statement that “jewelry was stolen. Additional details about the loot are not being provided at this time.”

Dutch police launched a huge search involving a helicopter and sniffer dogs and arrested a 22-year-old and a 26-year-old man nearby, both from Belgium, shortly after.

“These two persons were driving a gray vehicle with a Belgian registration number. This car was pulled over... Their possible involvement is still under investigation,” it said.

The TEFAF fair is one of the biggest in Europe, and features hundreds of works, including a 17th-century drawing by a Dutch Old Master on sale for 1 million euros.

Videos on social media showed the four men, all wearing flat caps, glasses and smart blazers, amid scenes of chaos at the art fair.

One struck the jewelry case at least 12 times while burglar alarms wailed.

He finally smashed through the glass, reaching in to pick up something before putting it into a bag.

Two of the men brandished what appeared to be weapons at a bystander, who tried to intervene using a large glass vase full of flowers before backing off.

The men then ran off past a bemused elderly man, who had sat nearby on a bench throughout the drama.

A TEFAF spokesman added in a statement to AFP that its “security teams worked quickly to disarm an offender... Nobody was injured during the incident.”