Diamonds, women’s best friends. And thieves. Three minutes were enough to rob 10 kilos of diamonds on the tarmac of Brussels Zaventem airport. Like in an action movie, or perhaps in the Pink Panther saga, everything happened in rapid sequence. No bloodshed. No bullets. A clean job. Work of professionals disguised as policemen, who arrived on board two vans with flashing lights, after having broken through the fence in the western part of the airport, near the Ring, the ring road of Brussels, near some construction sites. An eight-man blitz. Hooded, armed with automatic machine guns, equipped with laser viewers, and a damn cold blood. Immediately swallowed by the darkness with 120 bags of precious stones and gold. Raiders disappeared in a flash, in the same darkness from which they had materialized, leaving behind a trail of questions and legend. It is no coincidence that the estimates of the stolen loot even reached 350 million euros, later reduced to 40 million by the Antwerp Diamond Center, which cited reliable sources in its support. Rough gems, it has been said. All still to be invented in their thousand facets.
Theoretically unsellable on the official market. The value of which, also for this reason, is actually difficult to establish. Witnesses describe how the commando immediately headed towards the Swiss Air aircraft, with passengers already on board, a few minutes before take-off for Zurich. The Brink’s cash carriers had just finished loading the overhead hold when the eight got out of the cars and immobilized them. And with them also the pilot and co-pilot. The four hostages, stunned, surprised, incredulous, had nothing left to do but watch the robbers break down the doors of the loading area, take possession of the treasure and quickly walk away, in the same direction they had come from. Not far away, the local police found one of the two vehicles used for the robbery burnt. But it is not the first time that Zaventem airport, a crossroads of wealth, also due to its proximity to Antwerp, the world diamond capital, has been violated. According to the pages of local newspapers, there have been at least five episodes from 1995 to today. On October 31, 2000, for example, another Brink’s-Ziegler cash van was attacked while it was transferring fifteen kilos of diamonds to a Lufthansa aircraft headed to Frankfurt. In that case the criminals managed to take possession of precious stones worth around 6.5 million euros. But yesterday evening at 7.47pm in the Belgian national airport the fire was raised. And now, as more investigations into the episode are underway, questions are being asked about the true identity of the raiders who carried out the attack.
