UN diplomat's car stolen, crashed while he stopped for beverage

WORTH IT? Cops cordon off the crashed Mercedes yesterday, while driver Ghulan Rehmani, who had been grabbing a cup of tea while it was stolen, is left to savor his purchase


All he wanted was a spot of tea -- but he ended up in a spot of trouble.

The chauffeur for a senior UN diplomat from the United Arab Emirates dashed into a Gramercy Park bodega for a cup of tea yesterday, and left his $100,000 Mercedes double-parked and idling outside.

And in a New York minute, a thief drove off with the sedan, lost control and crashed it.

“I was in there for only a minute, and when I came outside it was gone,” said driver Ghulan Rehmani, 43, who calmly sipped his $1 cup of Indian Danedar tea outside the Punjab deli on Third Avenue near 19th Street while cops investigated the 10 a.m. smashup.

The crook didn’t get far in the 429-horsepower Mercedes S550, which goes from 0 to 60 in six seconds and has a top speed of 132 mph.

The dark-blue sedan rocketed off in a perfect circle during a failed U-turn attempt, crashing into a scaffold outside a luxury high-rise next to the deli.

“He was trying to make a U-turn and didn’t know how to drive,” said Rehmani, of Astoria, Queens, a driver for Saeed al Shamsi, who had arrived just days ago for the UN General Assembly.

“He made a U-turn, jumped the sidewalk and hit the building.”

The unidentified thief ran off and remains at large.

Shamsi is believed to have been at the United Nations at the time.

A spokeswoman for the UAE Mission would only describe Shamsi as “a senior member” of the delegation in town for the General Assembly, saying no other information was available.

The Benz, registered to a New Jersey car service, had a flat front-left tire and minor dents. It was released to the company.

The NYPD took the incident seriously, keeping Rehmani at the 13th Precinct station house through the afternoon so intelligence officers could question him.