Migrant 'Fagin' ran Tube gang

An asylum seeker from former Yugoslavia ran a gang of child pickpockets, some as young as seven, preying on Tube commuters, it was revealed today.

Bearded Vaske Besic, 34, became a latter-day Fagin shortly after his arrival in Britain and was responsible for doubling the amount of pickpocketing offences on the Underground.

Police, who today named Besic as the mastermind behind the operation, are unable to say just how much the children stole during their 18-month campaign, but some were found with up to £2,000.

Besic, who was regularly seen dropping off children in his Mercedes at East Ham Tube station, controlled the activities of three extended families, it was claimed today as further details emerged of the scale of the pickpocketing operation, first revealed in the Standard on Monday. Up to 30 immigrants are thought to have been involved.

At one stage, police resorted to using a dentist to examine the children's teeth to establish their ages and find out if they were above the age of criminal responsibility. One 14-year-old, who claimed to be under 10, was arrested more than 90 times. Another , now seven, was arrested 27 times and her eight-year-old sister 46 times. The children would be returned to their home address, from where they would set out the next day to rob passengers in the West End.

Besic arrived on a false passport in Dover in autumn 1999, with his partner and four children. He sought asylum and said he was head of a gipsy family from Sarajevo.

Asylum was refused but he appealed and last May was granted exceptional leave to stay on the ground that gypsies in former Yugoslavia are an oppressed minority. Police told The Times that Besic is the head of the Jasarevic family, which exerts a "significant influence" on the Sulic and Armidovic families from the same region.

As police took action against the gang, the Besic family moved from East Ham, to Barking then Dagenham, finally disappearing altogether in June. Besic was arrested only once, in October last year, for a drinkdriving offence. So lucrative was the pickpocketing operation the family are not thought to have claimed any benefits.

The children employed methods with which the Artful Dodger and his gang would have been familiar. While some would distract victims, another would dip their back pocket or handbag. Their favourite moment to strike was when a victim was about to board a train or get off an escalator.

Last year the children were held responsible for doubling pickpocketing on the Tube to 10,626. Police drafted in an extra 40 officers and in the 12 months to this September the number of offences has fallen to 5,035.

One tactic employed by undercover officers was to follow the children from east London Tube stations into the West End. Sometimes the officers would let the children know they were on their tail.

Stop and search operations were carried out and homes searched, forcing some of the children to give up.

Det Insp Keith Griffiths, of British Transport Police, today appealed for anyone with information on the Besic family to come forward. He said: "They could be in Birmingham or Paris. We should like to know their whereabouts because I am most concerned about the children. They are suffering from neglect."

Attempts to prosecute children were hampered by identification problems. Many pretended not to speak English and refused to co-operate. Some were taken into care in an attempt to remove them from Besic's grasp.