[CPProt.net] Stolen Munch works recovered, nine arrested

[MSN and CPProt list (Ton Cremers)]

Stolen Munch works recovered, nine arrested
Published: 3/7/2005
  
OSLO - Three works by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch were recovered Monday
night a day after they were stolen from a hotel in southeastern Norway and
nine people were arrested, a senior police official said. 

"We found the paintings in Oslo thanks to good intelligence work," police
inspector Iver Stensrud told AFP. He said nine people were arrested in Oslo
and were being questioned. 

He indicated that investigations into the theft six months ago of the
expressionist painter's masterpieces "The Scream" and "Madonna" provided
clues that led to the unraveling of the latest heist. 

But Stensrud said it was too earlier to tell whether the two thefts were
linked. The major works stolen from an Oslo art gallery last year have not
been recovered. 

A painting called "The Blue Dress," dating from 1915, and two lithographs, a
self-portrait of Munch and a portrait of Swedish author and playwright
August Strindberg, were snatched off the dining-room wall of a hotel. 

Stensrud declined to say what condition the paintings were in when they were
recovered. 

A hotel employee disturbed two men as they were leaving the dining room of
the Refnes Gods with the paintings under their arms late Sunday. They
dropped one, but ran off with the other three. 

An alarm aimed at protecting the pictures was reportedly not on at the time.


The Refnes Gods hotel, which is located on the Jeloeya island outside Moss,
has more than 400 artworks on display. It was fully booked when the robbery
took place. 

While Salbuvik did not divulge how much the three pictures were worth, Hans
Richard Elgheim of the Oslo auction house Galleri Wedels Plass Auksjoner
told Norwegian daily VG that the lithographs were worth between 200,000 and
500,000 kroner (32,100-80,300 dollars, 24,300-60,800 euros) each. 

As for "The Blue Dress", he said, "It's an original and is worth much more
than the lithographs. We're talking about several millions. But it is also
the picture that will be the hardest to sell". 

In last year's robbery, the thieves burst into the Munch Museum in broad
daylight, threatening a member of staff with a gun as stunned tourists
looked on, before grabbing the paintings off the walls and fleeing in a
stolen car. 

Surprisingly simple in its execution, the August 22 heist took just a few
minutes. But an ensuing controversy lasted for weeks when it was revealed
that there were no surveillance images good enough to help investigators,
perhaps a sign of naivety in a country largely spared by violent crime. 

Police found the getaway car the same day, but the thieves had dumped the
contents of a fire extinguisher into the car to remove any DNA traces. The
paintings' wooden frames were also found, possibly discarded because they
may have contained electronic tracking devices. 


03/07/2005 23:07 GMT 

  AFP and  Turkish Press