European arrest warrant for armed robbery

The National Police have arrested a 28-year-old Romanian fugitive wanted on a European arrest warrant for armed robbery. He was identified by police officers at a local street market. And in neighbouring Torremolinos, another foreign fugitive has been arrested. The 52-year-old German was wanted on a warrant from his home country, where he faces fraud charges

crime wave sweeping the Costa Blanca

crime wave sweeping the Costa Blanca and other parts of southern Spain popular with foreign tourists. Hundreds of holiday villas have been attacked recently by criminal gangs, many of them Romanians and Albanians.
The criminals are not only burgling houses. A hire-car belonging to Geoff and Diane Winnard, a retired couple from Bournemouth, was rammed from behind as they drove from Alicante airport to their holiday villa.
“One man reached into my car and grabbed my wife’s handbag and drove off,” said Geoff Winnard, 58. The men made off with their passports, credit cards and £2,750 of jewellery.

hidden storage room

Police have uncovered a hidden storage room in Spain holding 1,800 pieces of pre-Colombian art, including ceremonial masks, ceramics, jewellery and a suit of 37 plates of gold - artefacts from a collection last seen in public 10 years ago.
Many of the metallic pieces, including four copper masks, four gold rattles and four gold nose pendants, derived from the ancient tomb of the Lord of Sipan, one of the most important vestiges of pre-Inca Moche culture in Peru.

nabbed a bag snatcher

Police in Benalmádena Costa nabbed a bag snatcher just moments after he had robbed three tourists on Friday afternoon. The alleged thief, identified only as a Romanian man, was picked up at 1.30pm on Calle Carril del Siroco. When police grabbed him, he was about to steal the bags of two British tourists.

four robberies in Sotogrande and Pueblo Nuevo de Guadiaro have been reported to the police

A further wave of four robberies in Sotogrande and Pueblo Nuevo de Guadiaro have been reported to the police. The thieves were looking for money and jewellery and used the same modus operandi as on previous occasions. They entered all of the properties while owners were asleep.

thefts of heavy construction-related vehicles

The police are investigating a rash of thefts of heavy construction-related vehicles such as cement mixers in Malaga province. They believe an organised gang is behind the theft of these vehicles which can weigh more than 20 tonnes, cost about 150,000 euros and are sometimes owned by self-employed people rather than companies.

The last two thefts occurred at two cement plants on the Marbella-Coin road. The owners of both vehicles left them at the plants at the end of the week, and found them gone the following Monday. One of the owners, who lives in Cártama, said it was worse than a car theft: “They’ve robbed me of my job”. There have been similar incidents in Cordoba and Sevilla and last week, police in Velez-Malaga recovered a digger which had been stolen from a construction site in Granada.