A Brief History
On February 18, 2013, eight robbers dressed up as police officers hit the Brussels Airport in Belgium with a brazen diamond heist that netted the crooks $50 million worth of the precious stones.
Digging Deeper
Using a van and a car made up to look like police vehicles and wearing police type uniforms while armed with AK-47 type rifles, the robbers entered the airport through a hole they cut in the perimeter fence and intercepted the load of diamonds as they were being transferred from an armored truck to a Fokker 100 jetliner operated by Helvetic Airways.
The robbers made off with 130 bags of diamonds, somehow missing some additional bags. No shots were fired, and passengers on the airliner did not know what had happened. The robbers made their getaway, but by May of 2013, 31 of the suspects had been arrested and some of the diamonds recovered. Despite 19 robbers being tried for the crime, only the mastermind was convicted.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Necessary, John. The Great Diamond Heists: Unraveling the Mysteries of High-Stakes Robberies. Kindle, 2023.
Newman, Renee. Diamonds: Their History, Sources, Qualities and Benefits. Firefly Books , 2021.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Lucash of Brussels Airport while landing on runway 25R, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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