Nearly 14 years after a million-dollar jewel robbery at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a Dutch court has imposed several years‘ imprisonment on the perpetrators. The two men, who were in the van at the end of February 2005, were sentenced yesterday by a Haarlem court to six and seven years respectively.
A former employee of the Dutch airline KLM, which had provided the perpetrators, among other KLM uniforms, received five years in prison.
Suspected mastermind already died
A fourth suspect, who had previously attempted to rob the driver of the escape car, was sentenced to three and a half years. Two suspects were acquitted. Two friends of the perpetrators each received three months in prison for money laundering, the alleged mastermind recently died.
Armored vehicle attacked
Five men and two women were arrested in January 2017 in Spain and the Netherlands on charges of robbing diamonds and jewelery worth an estimated 66 million euros.
In the case of the theft, armed gunmen had raided an armored vehicle belonging to the airline KLM, where the jewels were located, in a security area at Amsterdam Airport. The jewelery was supposed to be brought aboard a plane that was to fly to Antwerp, Belgium – one of the world’s largest diamond trading centers.
There is still a search for prey
Part of the prey was soon found in an escape vehicle. The rest with a value of around 40 million euros is still being sought.
It was one of the biggest jewel thefts of the past 15 years. The value of the spoils is exceeded by the robbery at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, France on July 28, 2013, in which jewels worth 103 million euros were stolen.
