Dutch To Extradite Wanted German Fugitive Drach

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Dutch to extradite wanted German fugitive Drach

A Dutch court on Tuesday approved the extradition of top German fugitive Thomas Drach, wanted for a series of high-profile cash-in-transit heists in Germany

The Hague, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th May, 2021 ) :A Dutch court on Tuesday approved the extradition of top German fugitive Thomas Drach, wanted for a series of high-profile cash-in-transit heists in Germany.

"The extradition has been approved," the Amsterdam District Court said in a printed verdict, of which AFP was sent a copy.

The Amsterdam court did not name Drach in official papers, but court and law officers confirmed his identity.

It was also not immediately clear when Drach, aged 60, would physically be transferred to Germany.

Drach, who was arrested in Amsterdam in February, first achieved notoriety for his role in the kidnapping of tobacco empire millionaire Jan-Philipp Reemtsma in 1996.

Caught on a Europe-wide arrest warrant issued by law officials in Cologne, Dutch police however did not release details of Drach's capture.

He is suspected of at least three major cash-in-transit heists in 2018 and 2019 including one at Cologne airport in which a security guard was seriously wounded by machine-gun fire, and another at an IKEA store, according to German media.

He is also believed to have masterminded the kidnapping of tobacco millionaire Reemtsma, heir to the family's cigarette company fortune, from his Hamburg home in March 1996.

Reemtsma was held for a month in a cellar and freed in exchange for a record ransom in a case that gripped Germany.

Drach was first arrested in 1998 in a five-star hotel in Buenos Aires in possession of a false British passport and sentenced to more than 14 years in prison.

He was released in 2013.