Police said they arrested two people and are looking for the others.
The Hague the Netherlands:
Armed robbers raided one of the world’s leading art fairs in Maastricht on Tuesday, police said, with video showing them smashing a display case with a sledgehammer.
Dramatic footage on social media showed four smartly dressed suspects carrying out the raid and threatening people with what appeared to be pistols at The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in the southwestern city.
Police said they arrested two people and are looking for the others.
“The police are investigating a possible armed robbery of the TEFAF in Maastricht. Four suspects are said to be involved. They are now wanted by several units,” the Limburg police said on Twitter.
Police said they had closed a number of nearby roads and a major road tunnel while they hunted down the suspects.
According to Dutch media, the display case targeted by the robbers contains objects from a London jeweler.
TEFAF is one of the largest art fairs in Europe and regularly attracts tens of thousands of visitors.
It has been running for over 30 years and returned this year after a hiatus during the Covid pandemic.
Videos showed the four men, dressed in an apparent disguise of flat caps and glasses, making their way into a jewelry box.
Two of the men waved what looked like weapons at a bystander, who tried to intervene with a large glass vase full of flowers.
– ‘Shake’ –
Photos on social media showed a shattered glass case at the exhibit.
A visitor, Jos Stassen, told the NOS that he had gone to the exhibition on Tuesday to look at the art in peace.
“Normally it is very quiet … serene, but now I suddenly heard a lot of noise and I turned around and suddenly saw those men,” the NOS quoted him as saying.
“One started hitting and the others kept people away, chased everyone away. I also saw a weapon. It went really fast and it lasted a very short time, but I’m still shaking a little bit.”
The phrase “Peaky Blinders” began to gain popularity on social media in the Netherlands after the raid because the caps the suspects wore resemble those in a British historical crime drama of the same name.
It is not the first time that the TEFAF scholarship has been targeted by criminals.
A ring and diamond necklace worth 860,000 euros ($1.2 million at the time) from a London jeweler were stolen at the exhibition in 2011.
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