Dutch police recover second stolen painting
Indigo Ace
Dutch police recover second stolen painting
17.09.05 1.00pm
COPENHAGEN/LOS ANGELES - Two masterpiece paintings -- a self-portrait
of 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt and a work by French
impressionist Pierre-August Renoir -- stolen from Sweden's National
Museum five years ago have been recovered, Danish and US officials
said this morning.
Four men, two Iraqis, a Gambian and a Swede, were arrested by Danish
police in a sting operation while showing the US$40 million ($57.44
million) Rembrandt to a potential buyer at a Copenhagen hotel on
Thursday, Danish police said.
"We have recovered the painting during a planned action," police
spokesman Flemming Steen Munch told Reuters in Copenhagen, adding that
the four men would be held in custody for 13 days pending further
investigation.
Meanwhile, Renoir's A Young Parisienne, stolen from the Swedish museum
along with the Rembrandt portrait, was recovered in the United States,
according to an FBI spokeswoman in Los Angeles.
She said more details about the Renoir, valued at an estimated US$13
million, would be disclosed at a Los Angeles news conference later
today, where the painting will be displayed for the media.
Both works were snatched from the museum on Stockholm's waterfront by
an armed gang that entered the building just before closing time in
December 2000.
While one man brandished a sub-machinegun in the lobby, two others
seized the paintings from the second floor. As they escaped,
scattering spikes on the road to delay pursuers, two cars exploded
nearby, creating a diversion. The men then made off in a small boat
which was later recovered.
A third painting stolen in that heist, Renoir's Conversation, was
recovered by Swedish police in 2001.
- REUTERS
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10346018
--
Anne
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