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21 January 2004
BARCELONA – Police have arrested six suspected members of an international kidnapping gang who were in the country to seize a major drug dealer, authorities said Wednesday.
Regional police in Catalonia said two Yugoslavs, two Germans, an Italian and a Slovak were arrested in the Barcelona province and all six were armed and had criminal records in several countries.
Police said the six were in Barcelona on a contract to kidnap a major trafficker and make off with the dealer’s drugs.
The arrests were made after German authorities sent their counterparts in Spain a warrant for the capture and extradition of one of the Yugoslav suspects identified as Dalibor P on extortion charges.
Spanish police located Dalibor P in the Catalonian city of Sabadell, where investigators discovered that he was in the province with the rest of the suspects to carry out the kidnapping.
Police said members of the gang botched a kidnapping on 12 January when they grabbed the wrong man.
But they beat him up and abandoned in a wooded area in the Barcelona area.
The victim was able to identify his kidnappers and a day later police stopped a car speeding towards the French border in which four of the gang members were traveling.
The two other gang members were later arrested in Sabadell.
Two of the suspects with international arrest warrants have been extradited to Germany, while the other four were being held in a Spanish jail.
[Copyright EFE with Expatica]
Subject: Spanish news