Ten hooded people armed with Kalashnikov rifles rob two armored vans in Switzerland, take loot of 11 million francs (just over 11 million euros) and go on the run.
It looks like a scene from
The paper house,
but they are real events: they occurred in August 2019 in the canton of Vaud.
The robbers blocked the passage of the vehicles, which were transporting bank funds, with their cars.
The driver of one of the trapped vehicles managed to escape, but the companions who were traveling in the other did not suffer the same fate and received numerous blows from the assailants, according to Swiss media reports.
One of the attackers was Tarek Saadi, a Frenchman who is currently 32 years old, who fled and who, three and a half years later, was arrested this Thursday by the National Police in the municipality of Llers (Girona).
After committing the multimillion-dollar robbery, the fugitive and his companions burned one of the vans they had robbed and two of the cars they had used to flee.
Although the Swiss agents managed to arrest nine of the ten participants days after the robbery.
Saadi broke free and managed to escape.
He now faces a life sentence in France, according to police sources, for the crimes of organized robbery with weapons, damage, arson and belonging to a criminal organization.
The fugitive had remained hidden for several years in a small rustic farm prepared for farming and equipped with a rural shed located on the outskirts of Llers (pop. 1,239).
The farm was completely isolated in the countryside and without houses, in a place that was difficult to locate and access.
Saadi had set up a complex surveillance device in his fort that kept him alert for any hint of strange or unknown presences in the vicinity.
The fugitive had installed video surveillance cameras with real-time tracking and had trained dogs that would bark if they sensed someone lurking in the area.
Spanish investigators received a tip from French authorities in October 2020 that a fugitive accused of taking part in a massive assault in Switzerland was in Spain.
At first, the agents located Saadi in the province of Malaga, but after an exhaustive investigation, his trail led them to the province of Girona.
There they discovered his hiding place.
Initially, the investigators verified that the property was occupied by a man who spent practically the entire day locked inside the house.
They also detected the presence of a dog, which the resident let out, although he always hid his face.
This zeal raised the suspicions of the agents: the discreet neighbor turned out to be the fugitive wanted by France, Tarek Saadi.
When the agents entered the house to arrest him, Saadi then tried to repeat his feat of three and a half years ago and get away from the police.
He tried to escape through a window, without success.
Inside the house, the investigators found a marijuana dryer, narcotic substances with a total weight of approximately 7.83 kilograms, utensils for growing marijuana, a bud dryer with an approximate weight of 1,785 kilograms, a short firearm with the numbers erased, a magazine with 12 cartridges, 2,625 euros in cash, a French identity card and a French passport with false affiliation.
Last December, the Civil Guard arrested another French fugitive, who was hiding in Marbella under a false identity: Paco Arnaud Van Damme.
His real name is Edouard Fernando Pinto and he is being sentenced to ten years for money laundering from drug trafficking.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KMEYMJKESBAZBE4MRBAM4TGHIQ.jpg)
