Former U.S. football star O. J. Simpson was arrested on robbery charges in Las Vegas Sunday, three days after police began an investigation into a casino theft involving the well-known sports celebrity.

Simpson, 60, was put into police custody soon before noon on charges in relation to an armed robbery of sport memorabilia in a Las Vegas casino and hotel Thursday, police said.

The charges include robbery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary with a firearm, according to a police spokesman.

An earlier report said that Simpson's accuser, a California sport memorabilia collector, was not interested in pursuing the case against the former NFL star anymore. But police said he had not formally dropped his accusation.

Alfred Beardsley of Burbank told police Thursday that Simpson and his men stormed the hotel room and stole memorabilia at gunpoint. Simpson has said he was trying to retrieve stolen items that belonged to him, and denied the involvement of guns.

Simpson has been a media sensation after he was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her boy friend Ron Goldman in 1994 in the front of his Los Angeles residence. He was acquitted of criminal murder charges later but was found liable for their deaths in a civil lawsuit.

His new book, If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, was recently released and on top of Amazon's best-selling list.

After an effort to publish the book himself failed, a U.S. federal judge awarded the book's rights to the Goldman family to offset Simpson's debts owed to the family in the civil lawsuit. 

(Xinhua News Agency September 17, 2007)