Alleged Pink Panther faces charges in Japan over diamond tiara theft
A member of "Pink Panther" gang of international jewellery thieves has been indicted to stand trial in Tokyo over a robbery three years ago.
by Our Foreign Staff
Published: 1:26PM BST 03 Sep 2010
Montenegrin Rifat Hadziahmetovic, an alleged member of the Pink Panther gang of international jewel thieves Photo: AFP
Rifat Hadziahmetovic, a Montenegrin, was extradited to Japan from Spain, where he had been taken into custody over other charges. Tokyo prosecutors alleged that Mr Hadziahmetovic robbed a tiara, worth 284 million yen (£2.18 million)" from a jewellery store in Tokyo.
<!-- BEFORE ACI --> In the heist at Tokyo's upmarket Ginza district on June 14, 2007, Mr Hadziahmetovic and another "Pink Panther" member were alleged to have sprayed tear gas at store clerks, stole the jewellery and fled on bicycles. Mr Hadziahmetovic's arrest was one of several blows suffered by the Pink Panthers, a once seemingly untouchable band of thieves drawn from paramilitary circles in the former Yugoslavia.
The smash-and-grab crime group is known to have stolen jewellery worth hundreds of millions of dollars in nearly 30 countries over the past decade.
The group is also thought to have stolen 3.5 billion yen worth of gem products from another Ginza jewellery shop in 2004. Mr Hadziahmetovic, in his early 40s, was arrested in Cyprus in 2009 on a European warrant over the theft of luxury watches in Spain, to where he was transferred.
Japan then sought his extradition. Radovan Jelusic, the other suspect in the Tokyo heist, was arrested in Rome in May in possession of a forged Croatian passport. He was wanted in Cyprus, Japan and several other countries. The gang was given its name after British detectives found a diamond ring hidden in a jar of face cream, echoing an incident in the 1963 comedy film "Pink Panther", starring Peter Sellers.
