Alex Trelinski
SIX men have been arrested by the Policia Nacional for kidnapping and torturing a young Dutch man in Fuengirola.
The Policia Nacional has released images of the crew’s arrest last year, showing two of the suspects lying face down surrounded by armed police.
The gang were dubbed the Peaky Blinders of the Netherlands in reference to their actions bearing a similarity to the popular television drama series about gangsters operating in Birmingham between the two World Wars.
The gang leader is a 38-year-old known as ‘Lee A’ who reportedly has a British father and a Dutch mother.
He has a Peaky Blinders tattoo and ran a construction company in the Netherlands.
The 24-year-old victim was robbed in the Netherlands last April when driving a car containing cocaine with a retail value of €3 million.
One of the gang members forced him to go to the UK to do a lie detector test but the results were inconclusive.
He was then accompanied back on a flight to Malaga before holding him captive at a Fuengirola house belonging to one of the organisation’s leaders.
The young man was then taken to a field on the outskirts of Fuengirola.
They put a tape over his mouth and zip ties on his hands and feet so he couldn’t scream or defend himself.
Then, while threatening him with guns, they stabbed him in the feet with a machete, wounded his hands, and slit the phalanges of his two index fingers.
As the second one was being sliced off, he lost consciousness from the pain.
His captors thought he had been killed, threw him into a bramble area and fled the scene.
He is now living in Turkey and has undergone several operations on his hands and feet.
The violent gang consists of a 26-year-old, a 31-year-old and a 35-year-old man from the Netherlands.
A fourth Dutchman, a 35-year-old was arrested by French police on November 10.
In addition to the Dutch suspects, a British national was also arrested in the United Kingdom.
A sixth man was arrested in Marbella with one of the six-strong gang being bailed in January.
