Modern highwaymen

Press, 30 August 1984, Page 21

Modern highwaymen

Police reinforcements have been hurried to the south of France to face a disturbing outbreak of a type of crime that the French associate with the distant past. Highwaymen are ambushing tourist cars on the roads south, and relieving the foreigners of their holiday money and jewellery. Four incidents were reported in a single night last week, in the southern French department of the Herault and the Gard.

Three German families sleeping in their cars by the roadside were woken by masked men who robbed them at pistol point of their money and valuables. Earlier the same night, a Dutch couple were forced off the road by the same masked gang in a stolen BMW. The Dutch driver managed to make a fast Uturn and escape. Later, three young Germans were cornered by the BMW and robbed. The BMW which had, been stolen from Swiss tourists^was found abandoned and partly b&rned the next morning. The same night another gang

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waylaid a young Frenchman but found that he was out of work and penniless. There have now been 12 ambushes in three weeks. In some cases the highwaymen have terrorised their victims by breaking their windscreens with axes or firing bullets into their tyres. Sometimes the bandits have driven off in the ambushed cars. The French authorities are torn between the need to warn tourists to take precautions while driving at night and the fear that the publicity could make highway robbery infectious. Police point out that the number of incidents is small given the hundreds of thousands of tourists’ cars now on the French roads. “We must not give certain law- i less elements the idea of doing • things they would never have thought of,” said one of the gen-

ROBIN SMYTH,

in Paris

darme officers in charge of the highwayman hunt. What worries police is that ambushes are an easy way of making quick money in the dense holiday traffic at this time of the year. Wrongly-handled, highway crime could become an alarmingly common form of delinquency. Tourists are being warned not to park in isolated spots at night but always look for places where there are other cars and houses. Police are spreading nets of patrols, road blocks and identity checks across the southern roads. At the end of last month they scored their first success when one of the bandits was caught, at a roadblock. His two accomplices were arrested a few days later. All were in their early 20s. The white BMW gang and one or two other groups are still at large. Copyright — London Observer Service.