The police forces of Belgium, France and Switzerland have joined forces in unravelling the mystery around the diamond robbery at Brussels international airport in February.
In a coordinated action Wednesday involving around 300 policemen, Belgian police have detained 24 people in relation to the bold heist three months ago and "recovered big amounts of cash", a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor said.
Local media report that Swiss police made six arrests and seized some of the missing diamonds. A suspected member of the eight-man gang who nabbed the jewels on a Belgian airport tarmac in February was picked up in France on Tuesday.
"We believe the man arrested in France is one of the authors of the robbery," said Jean-Marc Meilleur of the Brussels prosecutor's office and added: "It's the only person that we can say at this stage they could have participated in the events on the tarmac."
The bold robbery took place on 18 February when eight heavily armed men made off with $50 million worth of diamonds after they managed to open security barriers at Brussels international airport in Zaventem. They tool with around 120 packages of the haul of a Swiss passenger aircraft standing on the runway.
The heist was spectacular as not even a bullet was shot and no one was injured.
At the time, the spokeswoman of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) characterised the robbery as "one of the biggest" ever.
