GERMAN police have recovered around 100 items that belonged to late Beatles star John Lennon, which were stolen from his widow in New York.

The items include three diaries, two pairs of his signature metal-rimmed glasses, a cigarette case and a handwritten music score.

The retrieved possessions were displayed yesterday at Berlin police headquarters.

“This was a spectacular, unusual criminal case,” police spokesman Winfrid Wenzel said.

German authorities first became aware of the items, stolen from Yoko Ono at her New York home in 2006, when a bankruptcy administrator for the Berlin auction house Auctionata contacted them in July.

The administrator had found the memorabilia in the company’s storage.

Police confiscated the items from the auctioneers two weeks later, and on Monday arrested a suspect and raided his Berlin home and cars.

They said another suspect, who is living in Turkey, is currently “not available,” but they would try to get him extradited to Germany.

During their investigation, officers and prosecutors flew to New York, where they met Ono to have her verify the stolen items’ authenticity.