Police said on Monday that they foiled what could have been one of the biggest robberies in British history, when they arrested seven men attempting to snatch nearly £80 million (US$142 million) in gold and cash from a warehouse just outside London's Heathrow airport.
"The gold was [worth] 40 million," a senior London police spokesman said. "We believe the figure is in the region of 30 to 40 million in cash, so between 70 and 80 million in total."
The police said their officers were lying in wait when the would-be robbers rammed their way into the Swissport cargo warehouse in a van and threatened staff with "at least one firearm and other weapons including knives and cudgels."
"In preventing this attack, we have foiled what would have been one of the biggest robberies ever committed in the United Kingdom," deputy police superintendent Barry Phillips told the media.
"We believe that these men were part of an organized criminal enterprise," he said, adding that the attempted robbery had required a lot of planning and preparation.
One of eight robbers escaped.
Had it succeeded, the heist would have dwarfed the 1983 Brinks Mat robbery in which £26 million in gold was stolen from a warehouse at Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport.
It also would have rivaled the famous Great Train Robbery of 1963, in which £2.3 million was lifted from a mail train -- a sum that would be worth about £40 million today.
"History will show that this is just as significant an attempted robbery in the 21st century as the Great Train Robbery and Brinks Mat," said Phillips, who branded the suspects, all in their early 30s, as "career criminals."
"They knew where the gold bullion was located inside the premises and went straight for it," he said. "As the vehicle reversed through the shutters, that was the signal for the armed police to ... effect the arrests."
Around 100 police officers took part in the operation near Heathrow's passenger Terminal Four and the main airport cargo terminals.
No gunfire was exchanged, though police used special rounds to shoot out the tires of the van. The only man to escape got away by hijacking a nearby van.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS