Valin Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 The Telegraph: Bruno Waterfield 19 Feb 2013 The raid at Zaventem international airport is one of the biggest diamond robberies in history. It took a highly-trained professional gang just three minutes to hold up a Swiss passenger jet before escaping into the night. Belgian police were baffled by a robbery that took place with precision, military timing and apparent insider knowledge, allowing the gang to aim for the delivery of a diamond consignment within a 15-minute time window. Wearing masks, hooded police anoraks and armed with machine guns equipped with laser sights, the robbers struck at 7.47pm local time on Monday night, just before the aircraft they sought was cleared for take-off. (Snip) (Video at Link) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted February 19, 2013 Author Share Posted February 19, 2013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted February 19, 2013 Author Share Posted February 19, 2013 Drag queens, fake beards and chocolates: Notable diamond heists Ivana Kottasová2/19/13London (CNN) -- Within eight minutes, a gang of eight men managed to snatch $50 million worth of diamonds from a plane on Brussels Airport on Tuesday."It comes as a big surprise that something like this is possible," said Jan Van der Cruysse, a spokesman for Brussels Airport. "But of course, this is rather connected to banditism and organized crime rather than aviation security."He is not the only official left stunned by robbers. From 1960s gangster film-style armed robberies to elaborate stunts involving drag queens and fake beards, thieves from around the world have tried almost anything to get hold of diamonds. Here are some of the biggest heists they pulled off:(Snip) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepper Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 @Valin "Belgian police were baffled by a robbery that took place with precision, military timing and apparent insider knowledge" What kind of reporting is this? A robbery that took place without precision, without military timing, and without insider knowledge usually would not have occurred. Those guys get caught. These guys apparently may get away. Why do Belgium police often seem to be baffled? Search Belgian mosque attack baffles police, Muslims - Story | The Star Online or Belgian Police Baffled by Spree of Sophisticated Rhino ... - Artinfo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted February 19, 2013 Author Share Posted February 19, 2013 @Valin "Belgian police were baffled by a robbery that took place with precision, military timing and apparent insider knowledge" What kind of reporting is this? A robbery that took place without precision, without military timing, and without insider knowledge usually would not have occurred. Those guys get caught. These guys apparently may get away. Why do Belgium police often seem to be baffled? Search Belgian mosque attack baffles police, Muslims - Story | The Star Online or Belgian Police Baffled by Spree of Sophisticated Rhino ... - Artinfo Maybe bafflement is part of their training. I would place a small wager that by now the police/interpol know pretty much who did this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepper Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 @Valin, perhaps, but I wager their underlings get picked up and charged and the masterminds get the loot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 @Valin, perhaps, but I wager their underlings get picked up and charged and the masterminds get the loot. Shades of the The Lufthansa Heist. The "underlings" will be lucky if they just get picked up. Honor among thieves.....forget about that, not with this kind of money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepper Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 @Valin, perhaps, but I wager their underlings get picked up and charged and the masterminds get the loot. Shades of the The Lufthansa Heist. The "underlings" will be lucky if they just get picked up. Honor among thieves.....forget about that, not with this kind of money. You should not have linked there, now I am hooked have to read 20 + ? sections. Will there be a quiz tomorrow? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 @Valin, perhaps, but I wager their underlings get picked up and charged and the masterminds get the loot. Shades of the The Lufthansa Heist. The "underlings" will be lucky if they just get picked up. Honor among thieves.....forget about that, not with this kind of money. You should not have linked there, now I am hooked have to read 20 + ? sections. Will there be a quiz tomorrow? This kind of stuff is one of my obsessions. Give me something about organized crime/street gangs/bikers/serial killers, and I'm like a fat kid in a candy store. And yes this often causes me some....concern. So the question is, who did this? Probably the Russian or Eastern European mafia. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clearvision Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 "Belgian police were baffled by a robbery that took place with precision, military timing and apparent insider knowledge" Maybe they need to bring in the expert... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Casino67 Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 How does one fence a load like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 Diamond 'heists' are not glamorous, they're nasty crimes by nasty people The glossy Hollywood spin of films like Ocean's 11 has removed us from the reality of robberies such as the one in Brussels Stephen Kelly 20 February 2013 It says something about the cultural resonance of film when Monday's £30m theft of diamonds from Brussels airport wasn't condemned as an act of criminality or something that, doubtlessly, left innocent people traumatised with the experience of being threatened by masked men with machine guns. It was a glamorous heist, obviously. You know, just like the ones George Clooney does in his spare time. Perhaps it is, simply, how we (and the media) make sense of senseless things: to stamp them with a glossy sort of Hollywood narrative. Yet there is something about the enduring "glamour" of this particular narrative – the calculated criminality of the heist story – that has hooked us in since the film noir The Asphalt Jungle laid down the blueprint for the genre in the 1950s. The dubious rush of crime has always formed some part of film – 1903's The Great Train Robbery being an early example – but it was here that it truly started to pay. (Snip) Comments Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 How does one fence a load like that? If as I suspect this is the work of the Russian or Eastern European mafia, they have a system all in place. The diamonds were probably sold before they were stolen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepper Posted February 21, 2013 Share Posted February 21, 2013 How does one fence a load like that? Big hiney??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valin Posted May 11, 2013 Author Share Posted May 11, 2013 Authorities arrest 31 in spectacular diamond heist Henry Chu May 8, 2013 LONDON -- Authorities in three countries have arrested 31 people in connection with a spectacular diamond heist in February that saw robbers disguised as police steal an estimated $50 million worth of gemstones from a parked plane on a Belgian airport runway. Anja Bijnens in the Brussels prosecutor’s office said Wednesday that at least some of the diamonds were recovered in Switzerland as well as a stash of money in Belgium. Police arrested 24 people in Belgium on Wednesday morning, plus one person in France and six others in Switzerland on Tuesday, authorities said. (Snip) Bijnens said the 31 arrests were the result of a joint operation by police in Belgium, France, Switzerland and Luxembourg. "The investigation is ongoing and will have to determine who did what exactly. For now, there are diamonds recovered in Switzerland, and we are sure they came from the robbery," though it was unclear if the entire haul had been found, Bijnens said. (Snip) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now