With the robbers never found, who was responsible? The unit commander stood at the gaping window of a shattered tower block, five storeys above the war- torn city. Points of light on distant hillsides showed where villages still had electricity, but the city itself was dark and deathly as the grave. The commander surveyed the target building just across the street, then turned to face his men. Scroll down for more. It was January 1. Beirut, Lebanon. Each of the eight soldiers was heavily armed, carrying an American- made M1. M2. 03 4. 0mm grenade launcher attached, plus a Browning high- powered pistol with a staggered 1. This was state- of- the- art weaponry, the sort of kit not available to conventional military forces. But what was even more remarkable was that each soldier was dressed in unmarked military fatigues, showing no identifying marks or signs of rank. The commander issued a swift set of instructions. Time to launch the attack. Two of HGTV’s most prominent stars, Jonathan and Drew Scott took time away from their busy filming schedule that includes the #1 and #2 rated lifestyle. The most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, George Gordon, Lord Byron, was likewise the most fashionable poet of the day. He created an immensely. Aura is a concept album by Miles Davis, produced by Danish composer/trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, released in 1989. All compositions and arrangements are by Mikkelborg. He turned back to face the grand facade of the Bab- Idriss branch of the British Bank of the Middle East (BBME), one of the oldest and most pre- eminent banking establishments in Lebanon at the time. Under normal circumstances, the bank’s cut stone walls and gracefully arched windows would not have looked out of place in the City of London’s banking district. But now scorch marks and ragged bullet holes peppered the stonework, the result of fighting between the Christian Phalangist militia and their Muslim enemies. Did Lyle and Erik Menendez murder their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion and then make taped confessions? The author talks to the mystery witness who says she. Even fake smiles reduce stress We think of our face as reflecting our internal emotions, but that linkage works both ways - we can change our emotional. The bank branch sign still displayed the BBME’S logo – an Arabian sailing dhow flanked by a pair of palm trees – yet the lettering had been damaged by gunfire. After nine months of vicious fighting, the city of Beirut was divided into a Muslim west and a Christian east, with the deserted no- man’s- land of the Green Line running down the middle. Rue Riad al- Solh – known as Bank Street and the city’s financial district – lay in the heart of this no- man’s- land. The BBME was located near the junction of Rue Riad al- Solh with Place de l’Etoile, a place of shattered and blasted shop fronts and offices. Yet incredibly, the bank was still operational, albeit on an ad- hoc basis. And in its supposedly impregnable vault contained in excess of . His men had two man- portable Israeli Soltam 6. Firing 4. 0mm grenades, they blasted their way into the lobby. Windows were shattered, furniture torn apart and pipes and electric cables ripped from the ceiling by the ferocity of the attack. Within minutes, stage one of the raid was complete and the bank was securely in their hands. Now the commander and his men turned to stage two of the operation – blasting open the bank’s vault. The vault’s door was several inches of glistening steel, its massive bulk secured to the walls by internal locking bars. There was no going through that. But the commander and his men had come fully prepared with an alternative route of entry. Enough explosive force channelled in the right direction would blast a hole through the adjacent wall, so by- passing the metal door and gaining access to the vault. This was highly specialised, potentially deadly work, of which only a few forces in the world are capable. Four hours into the assault, several massive explosions rocked the bank building as charges of PE4 plastic explosives were detonated. As the dense smoke cleared, a gaping hole had been blasted through the vault’s wall. Under the cover of the continuous shell blasts and the chaos in the city, the force was able to load up three trucks with the booty – consisting largely of gold bullion, plus cash dollars and a variety of shares, bonds and stock certificates. And then the commander and his men disappeared. However, it is all too real. The Lebanon bank job took place in the same year that Nasa landed its first space probe on Mars. Yet history had just been made in a somewhat less illustrious field. More than three decades on, it remains the world’s biggest ever bank robbery. It is recorded as such by Guinness World Records. Yet there is precious little written about the event, and there was practically no publicity at the time. I have spent two years meticulously investigating the raid for my latest book, and yet I have found virtually nothing concrete about it. In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, the accusations and counter- accusations began. The Christian forces blamed the Muslim militias, claiming that the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) had been behind it. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and DFLP were supposed to have fought a running battle for control of the bank’s loot at one point. Predictably, the Muslims in turn blamed the Christian Phalangist forces for carrying out the raid. When none of the loot was recovered, or anyone arrested, a multitude of theories surfaced as to who the unknown force of robbers might have been. The first suggested that the Muslim and Christian enemies had cut a deal to jointly carry out the raid. The second theory asserted that the Muslims had joined forces with safe- breakers from the Corsican or Sicilian mafia. The third claimed that the Russian mafia, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, or even the IRA were responsible. The most that has ever been written about the robbery is a one- page entry in a book called Inside The PLO, published in 1. In this, the authors Neil Livingstone and David Halevy conclude that the raid was carried out by the late Yasser Arafat’s PLO. They claim Arafat’s bodyguards – the enigmatically named Force 1. Corsican safe- breakers and flew them to Beirut to blow the vault. Immediately after, a mixed cargo of loot was then supposedly flown directly to Geneva and deposited in Swiss bank accounts. This begs the question as to how the Muslim PLO and the Catholic Corsican Mafia joined forces, and how they apportioned the loot; and how a cargo of stolen gold bullion, cash and stock certificates could have made it through Customs at Geneva Airport. The book’s author claims that the amount stolen was actually some $8. The total assets of the BBME’s Lebanon banking operations at the time were barely $3. For those responsible, it appears to have been the perfect crime. I have extensive sources within British Special Forces (UKSF), and two years ago I was told a remarkable account of how the raid on the BBME was executed, and by whom. We agreed to meet in Bar Italia, in Soho, London. Mike turned out to be barrel- chested, balding, with coal- dark eyes, and looked to be in his early sixties. Like most military contacts I know, he wolfed down his fried breakfast in the time it took me to butter my toast. Once he’d eaten he proceeded to ask me what was the world’s largest ever bank job? I guessed it was either the Great Train Robbery, the Brink’s Mat raid, or the recent Northern Ireland bank job. It was none of the above, he said. He proceeded to relate the story of the raid on the BBME. The Christian and Muslim militias may have had armed men on the ground capable of launching such an attack, he said, but neither force had the training or expertise to blast open the bank vault without killing themselves, or blowing the money sky- high. He fixed me with a hard stare: who did have such expertise and training? There was only one answer I could think of. But could the British SAS, or one or two other highly trained special forces, have carried out the world’s largest- ever bank raid? And if so, why? After two hours, Mike suggested I go away and do some research into the Lebanon robbery. If I wanted the story, then I should also do some of the legwork. What struck me first was that what happened at the BBME remains a total mystery even to this day, over 3. For such a highly profitable robbery, this is unprecedented. After the Lebanon job, the world’s second largest heist is the 1. Brink’s Mat robbery, in which some . I asked a trusted ex- SAS contact if British Special Forces had any prior history of carrying out bank jobs? If they did, it was something I had never heard of. As an exercise, it tests a force’s ability to plan out an assault on a well- defended building, and to get in and out without being compromised. On another level, if hostile regimes or terrorist groups have sensitive documents, banks are one of the commonest places of safety. Many offer blanket client confidentiality, which means that UKSF have to be ready to assault and burgle them whenever ordered to do so, or to rescue hostages hidden in their vaults. But were the SAS present on the ground during Lebanon’s brutal civil war? Officially, they were not. I turned to Ken Connor, a veteran of covert SAS operations, and one or two other ex- SAS contacts, to check. In reality, the SAS had been present during Lebanon’s civil war, but on highly classified missions. They had deployed into Beirut from the UK Armed Forces Base, RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, which has a secret eavesdropping site at Ayios Nikolaos, on the east side of the island. They were tasked with intelligence- gathering work in Beirut, much of which was in preparation for hostage- rescue operations. Later in the civil war in Lebanon, Muslim extremists took hostage Britons John Mc. Carthy, Brian Keenan and Terry Waite. In the early Eighties, an SAS assault force actually rehearsed a hostage rescue helicopter insertion into Beirut, although the operation was called off at the last minute. But saying that the SAS had the means to rob the bank and were on the ground at the time doesn’t mean they did it. I went back to Mike, my original source. We met in Dublin, where he was advising the Irish military on security matters. This is what he told me. In January 1. 97. SAS (a standard, 1. Cyprus base. The troop was tasked with a mission to infiltrate Beirut and gain access to the vault of the British Bank of the Middle East, to seize documents of value to Her Majesty’s Government. Lebanon had become a hub of world terrorism, and those documents detailed financial holdings of terror groups worldwide, including the PLO, PFLP and Islamic Jihad.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
Categories |