It was like a scene from a big Hollywood movie, except it was very, very real. A group of brazen armed thieves, a shipment of diamonds under guard, and a brilliantly executed plan. A group of armed men stormed the runway of the international airport in Brussels, Belgium, and made off with a shipment of diamonds worth $50 million dollars. The men wore police uniforms with camouflage masks, drove cars with lights, and had submachine guns. Call it a smash and grab on a large scale; this is one of the largest thefts in history.
“It was a well prepared operation. Robbers knew exactly when Brinks diamond and jewellery services truck would load,” said spokeswoman Ine Vanwymersch. The eight crooks “forced open the fence between two construction sites,” to get to the plane, held the pilots at gunpoint, and robbed the plane in 3 minutes. “It took them another two minutes to get to the tarmac and to escape in two vehicles: a black Mercedes Vito van and a black Audi A8. We don’t know the color of their skin or the language they spoke. We cannot comment on it. All eight were heavily armed.”
So how did the men figure out when the shipment would arrive? Well, it traveled by car from Antwerp, but aside from that… no one knows what might have made this brazen theft of diamonds from the belly of a Helvetic jet. Police have recovered the burned-out Mercedes Vito van, but no other clues have been recovered. Now the fun part will be getting rid of the evidence.
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