Some slink away into the shadows; others make a sheepish return home. When one young man decided to desert the French military this summer, however, he did so in style — on a succession of stolen luxury yachts.
Using the sailing skills he had picked up in his native French Polynesia, the 21-year-old celebrated his freedom by embarking on a glamorous tour of the Mediterranean. The former member of the 11th Maritime Artillery Regiment, who has not been named, had come to mainland France to serve in the army. He ran away from his base in Brittany after a dispute over his contract in June.
After an journey that took him through much of France, including Agen — where he was briefly arrested — and Biarritz, where two hotels said he left without paying the bill, he arrived on the Cote d’Azur in the middle of August last year.
“The sun and sea must have reminded him of Polynesia,” said Joel Gilson, of the Toulon maritime police. “He told us he just wanted to have fun, to set sail on some big yachts.”
The first vessel that caught his eye was the Ocean Alexander 83, worth 24 million euros (US$34.1 million), which the thief took from the port of Villeneuve-Loubet, near Antibes, on Oct. 15.
As soon as its owners realized it had gone, they called the local police, who issued an Interpol alert to all countries bordering the Mediterranean and all port authorities on the French coast.
By this time the rogue skipper was navigating his getaway toward Italy. Two days later, faced with a spent fuel tank, he was forced to stop at a port near San Remo, where the Italian coastguards spotted him and alerted the police.
However, while they were waiting for a European arrest warrant, the fugitive stole a dinghy and made off into the night. He only took the dinghy, Gilson said, because his attempt to steal another yacht had failed.
Next the fugitive returned to France and made off in another luxury boat, the Claro 7, worth about 3 million euros, from Cannes. Stepping up their attempts to catch him, police used a Lynx helicopter from the French military to track him down. He was finally arrested on Thursday in the port of Cavalaire near Saint Tropez.
“To begin with we thought he might be part of an international ring of professionals,” Gilson said. “But when we arrested him it was clear he was not a serious criminal, just a young guy.”
Police on the Cote d’Azur have warned owners of the risk of not installing alarms or tracking devices on their yachts.
“Very few people do it; some even leave their keys in there when they go,” Gilson said. “In these circumstances, there is nothing easier than stealing a yacht.”
The thief, who is being held in the south of France, now faces the prospect of time in prison.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS