Terminal 1 of Barcelona's El Prat airport was yesterday full of uniformed policemen, plainclothesmen and thieves trying to go unnoticed among the tumult of hundreds of travelers starting or ending their August holidays. The news advanced on Thursday by La Vanguardia of the multi-million dollar theft of a suitcase and a bag with jewels and watches in the check-in area of the Emirates company caused in the last few hours an effect of criminals who, without thinking about it, they have moved to the airfield to try their luck.
Just like that. In just three hours, this newspaper witnessed two red-handed arrests by public security officers from the airport's Mossos d'Esquadra. In this same space of time, the National Police transferred another arrested person. And so all morning.
The slogan of the police command of the airport was to expel them from the terminals. They caught all the acquaintances, the regulars, those who have the Prat as a base of operations and try to steal in the middle of the distraction without being seen. This is the tactic used on Wednesday afternoon by the two Kosovars who quietly and without being seen took away a Louis Vuitton cabin bag on which there was a Hermès Birkin handbag, both owned by a a 70-year-old Russian tourist who, with her daughter, was returning to her country after a holiday.
La Vanguardia advanced the contents of the hit: jewels and watches valued at eight and a half million euros, with a very special piece: a diamond ring set in white gold with a central stone of 47 carats, valued at four million and half euros
The call effect was evident because, in addition to the usual ones, the police began to discover "suspicious" characters hanging around in the passenger queues. Some of these suspects, in informal conversations with the agents, confessed to having traveled to "try their luck" after the news of the millionaire hit.
The famous ring arrived precisely yesterday at the airport police station bunker. A piece that the thieves threw out of the window of the rented car, with which they intended to leave Spain, when they were stopped by a traffic patrol on the highway, near Salt.
One of the police officers previously observed how the co-pilot threw something out of the window. But the priority at the moment was to intercept the vehicle and they continued until they forced it to stop. When the detainees and the loot arrived at the Girona police station, they discovered that the 47 carat ring was missing. At this moment one of the policemen remembered the moment of the window.
Several patrols moved to the highway and closed an area. Because of its size and the brilliance of the diamonds it shouldn't be difficult, but it was starting to get dark. In this joint team that was organized between the traffic police, the Girona police and the airport police, the latter came up with the idea of activating Tedax. Police officers specializing in deactivating explosives went there with a metal detector. In two hours the ring was located and the scientific police activated to collect it.
Yesterday, a couple of plainclothes policemen from the airport went to Girona to collect the ring and since Thursday the alleged perpetrators of the robbery have been sleeping in the dungeons of the El Prat police station. They will be brought before the court on Saturday accused of a crime of theft. There is no indication that they will not be released.
Another thing is if, as happens in other airports such as Madrid, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Prat requests an order to move away from the aerodrome to facilitate police work. In fact, one of the two detainees had an order to stay one kilometer away from the Adolfo Suárez terminals, in effect since the end of the year.
There was a lot of attention at the Emirates counters yesterday. The photograph of the ring that illustrates this information was also circulated among the company's staff. It was incomprehensible to everyone, not only the raving of the two women, but the reason why they were flying on a scheduled flight of a commercial company and not on a private plane, with all these jewels of carry-on luggage.
Neither showed excessive concern at the time of the complaint. The victims were already in flight when the Mossos called them to notify them of the arrest of the thieves and the recovery of all the jewels. They thought it was a joke. The woman explained that as soon as the police authorized her, she would either return or send someone she trusted to collect her belongings.
Even those who irregularly laminate travelers' luggage warned many tourists yesterday to be careful with their hand bags. "Caution, the thieves here are very good. Eight million euros were taken the other day", a classic warned a Russian couple. Although they weren't that good. Of course, they were lucky, but they wasted it.
