Holborn fire 'could be linked to same gang behind £200 million Hatton Garden diamond heist

A huge underground fire which brought part of central London to a standstill last week may be linked to the heist of safety deposit boxes from the city's diamond district, a former police chief has claimed.

John O'Connor, former head of Scotland Yard's Flying Squad, said he believed the blaze in Holborn may have been started by the same gang that raided Hatton Garden Safety Deposit Ltd's basement vault, just over half a mile away, over the Easter weekend. He told LBC radio: "(The police) may be connecting it to the underground fire at Holborn station which disabled all the electricty in that area for a period of time. I think that probably was deliberate. "I've never heard of an outage of electricity like that causing a fire that lasted as long as that. That seems to me as too much of a coincidence.

Whilst emergency crews were battling the fire, the diamond thieves were just around the corner, orchestrating a highly sophisticated raid. They are believed to have spent most of the bank holiday weekend smashing their way through concrete walls and drilling through 18in-thick metal doors to access the vaults. They abseiled down a lift shaft and disabled all security systems before breaking into up to 70 safety deposit boxes. The thieves are feared to have stolen gems and jewellery worth up to £200 million.

[link to www.telegraph.co.uk]

What a heist! They should make a film about it.