2 Foreign Men Arrested for Planning Robbery

Police in Phnom Penh Tuesday arrested two foreign men suspected of planning to rob the driver of a car which had suffered a flat tire after leaving a currency exchange shop, officials said.

The arrests follow a spate of at least five robberies in Phnom Penh in recent weeks in which motorists carrying large sums of money suffered flat tires and were robbed when they got out of their cars to check their tires.

Municipal Minor Crime Police Chief Song Ly said that police arrested the two men as they tried to flee after a motorist called police.

The vigilant motorist, a member of staff at the Thai telecommunications company Camshin, suffered a flat in Chamkar Mon district after making a withdrawal from the Cambodian Commercial Bank on Monivong Boulevard, municipal Penal Police chief Chuon Naren said.

The woman immediately called police and as officers arrived, two suspects fled the scene on a motorcycle but were later caught by police, he said.

Song Ly said the police had not recovered the men’s passports but believed that the suspects were Indonesian. An official at the Indo­nesian Embassy said she was looking into the matter.

On Monday, two men stole the equivalent of almost $8,600 from Kandal province currency trader Pheng Pharet after he had ex­changed US dollars for riel at Olympic Market, police said Tuesday.

Pheng Pharet had been in the process of changing a flat tire on Monivong Boulevard shortly before noon when he was robbed, Daun Penh district police chief Yim Socheat said.

The flat-tire theft was the third of its kind in the district this month, Yim Socheat added.

            (Additional reporting by Douglas Gillison)

 

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