First World War soldier buried 108 years after his death
Private John Tame died on August 16, 1917, during the Battle of Langemarck, and was one of three brothers who died between 1915 and 1917.
After his remains were discovered during roadworks near Ypres in Belgium, the Ministry of Defence's Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC) — also known as the War Detectives — identified him from a previous shoulder wound, a cap badge and shoulder title of the Royal Berkshire Regiment.
They traced his great nephew, Keith Brooks, who provided a DNA sample to confirm his identity. He was laid to rest on May 8 in Belgium, attended by
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The Sun
9 hours ago
- The Sun
I was trafficked into VIP child sex abuse at ‘orgy castles' – when I begged for help my mum did something unforgivable
''I was very outgoing and a very bossy little girl,'' says Anneke Lucas about her younger self. But by the age of six, Anneke says she was forced to work for a sick 'club' that operated within Belgium's upper class. 4 4 The mum-of-one, now 61, claimed she was raped for more than 1,700 hours before escaping at the age of 12 after the alleged five-and-a-half years of abuse. She has never gone to police with her shocking claims because she said she was scared into silence after allegedly watching kids getting killed by sadistic members as a 'warning' to others. Anneke previously told SunOnline: 'It really was the most horrendous crimes you can imagine. "Children were killed in the most brutal way because members were afraid they would speak out. 'And to make it worse, the abuse was from politicians and officials the public had put their trust in." At the time, a spokesman for the Federal Police in Belgium said they were unable to comment on Anneke's claims. Anneke claimed said she was sold into the sick paedo network by a cleaning lady who worked for her family in 1969. After gaining her mum's trust, the cleaning lady started to take the little girl on ''outings'' packed with children - who ''seemed to change all the time'', Anneke explained as she shared her brutal past with Unfiltered Stories. The fun lasted a year - before Anneke, unbeknownst to her at the time, was taken to ''an event''. 'I was used for an S&M show, on a low stage, chained up with an iron dog collar, and made to eat human faeces. Cops found me being raped by illegal immigrant at 14 but put me in handcuffs, they let grooming gangs abuse me for years 'Afterwards, left lying there like a broken object, I felt so humiliated,'' she told The Sun in 2017. But then came the biggest blow. After trying to find fitting words to explain what she had been brutally subjected to, Anneke's mum did the unforgivable. ''Instead of protecting me and taking me, she actually started to drive me [there] herself.'' Then, Anneke claimed, she was ''trafficked into a paedophile network that at the time consisted of the VIPs of the country''. The gruesome crimes were allegedly committed by ''a mix of politicians and high-placed officials'', ''the clergy, as well as aristocrats''. Despite wanting to break free, Anneke felt as if she had no choice but to endure the suffering - or the consequences would be fatal. ''I would definitely be killed if I spoke out - and that was made clear.'' The first three years, Anneke recalled, were ''very extreme''. ''I was sometimes taken to the bars and given to the men there. But other times, I was taken to the castles [...] and then at the late hour, the younger children would be brought in.'' What Is Human Trafficking? Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labour or commercial sex act. Every year, millions of men, women, and children are trafficked worldwide – including right here in the UK. It can happen in any community and victims can be any age, race, gender, or nationality. Traffickers might use the following methods to lure victims into trafficking situations: Violence Manipulation False promises of well-paying jobs Romantic relationships Language barriers, fear of their traffickers, and/or fear of law enforcement frequently keep victims from seeking help, making human trafficking a hidden crime. Traffickers look for people who are easy targets for a variety of reasons, including: Psychological or emotional vulnerability Economic hardship Lack of a social safety net Natural disasters Political instability. Source: Blue Campaign Some days, Anneke claimed she would be taken to ''somebody's house'' after her mum took her out from school to drive her daughter to the sick paedos. Her mother, she added in the gut-wrenching video, would be ''paid for this''. "Children were killed by sadistic members. Boys were more often used for torture than girls, but girls were killed. 'It was the worst thing you could imagine,'' Anneke shared with The Sun in 2017. Tied naked to a butcher's block During her years of emotional and physical abuse, Anneke said she felt as though she lived a double life because she still lived at home and attended school in the week. "I felt isolated and different from everyone else," she said. "I was shy, with few friends. No one cared for me. "It was strange because I was viewed as a beautiful object inside the network. Intelligence was valued and encouraged. "That is not how I felt in my home and school life." She claimed she eventually escaped the horrific network at the age of 12 after almost being 'tortured to death' inside a small room in one of the member's homes. Anneke claimed she was tied naked to a butcher's block while five other children were forced to mutilate her with kitchen tools. 'I was strapped to a butcher's block that was black with the blood of all the children that had come before me. 'One man was forcing five young children to harm me. It was part of their indoctrination. 'There was a crate with everyday hardware tools: screwdrivers, a pen knife, a belt with nails which was put around my arms, a fish hook and an apple corer. 'The apple corer was to make the biggest cuts. The man also stubbed a cigarette out on my arm. 'I still have scars all over my body. 'One girl left a penknife stuck in my arm. She accidentally twisted it as she pulled it out. 'I felt all the pain at once, like being stung by a swarm of bees. 'The blood trickling down my body tickled me. That was the worst part. 'I became scared and I thought I was going to die like all the other children who were not loved enough. 'It was the darkest moment of my life." Being saved by a member But just when she thought she was minutes from death, Anneke was allegedly saved by one of the members. She said that someone who was inside the sick network did a deal and she was released. "The agreement was that the man was going to go to work for the politician who was the boss of the network." The moment she was finally released, Anneke - covered in blood - was in a state of shock. The other children victims brought Anneke her clothes. She eventually left Belgium in the 80s and moved to Paris and Los Angeles before settling in New York. ''In 1988, when I was 25 years old, I was walking downtown Los Angeles, near Skid Row, and got a faint, specific whiff of human feces, and was assaulted with the memory of the extreme humiliation I had suffered as a child,'' she told Global Citizen. The mum-of-one - whose daughter is in her early 20s - now teaches yoga in jails as part of her non-profit organisation, Liberation Prison Yoga. She has battled post-traumatic stress and depression in the years since the harrowing ordeal. ''It takes so much energy to survive not only the physical violence, but to endure the psychic drain of abuse — to carry the shame,'' Anneke shared with the publication. But she says she has used a combination of therapy, yoga, meditation and writing to come to terms with what happened. Anneke has also started a petition to raise awareness about trafficking which has attracted almost 49,000 signatures. 4
Daily Mail
15 hours ago
- Daily Mail
$500m heist of the century: How a twinkly-eyed Italian outsmarted the 'Fort Knox' of Antwerp's diamond district in an audacious robbery worthy of an Ocean's Eleven plot... only to be foiled by a half-eaten salami sandwich
There were many good reasons not to attempt a robbery in the underground vault of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre. The fact that it was two floors down and behind a foot-deep steel door with a magnetic security alarm, two-part master key and a second lock with a million possible combinations.
The Sun
a day ago
- The Sun
How real Oceans 11 gang bagged £100m in world's biggest heist with spy cams & fake vault… but were undone by rooky error
IT was known as the Belgian 'Fort Knox' and security was second to none - with its seemingly impenetrable vault, state of the art alarms and high spec motion sensors. Yet the World Diamond Center, in Antwerp, was the scene of the biggest and most audacious diamond heist in history, in 2003, which saw thieves getting away with an estimated $100m and left police scratching their heads as to how they managed it. 12 12 In what could have been the script for a Hollywood movie, the investigation eventually led police to Italy and a gang of elite criminals, known as The School of Turin, each specialising in various skills including safe breaking and security cameras. As brilliant as the heist was, involving a camera pen and even a replica vault, the sophisticated gang were finally undone through one schoolboy error - a bag of rubbish containing half eaten cheese and a salami baguette which had been dumped in a forest outside the city. In the Netflix documentary, Stolen: Heist of the Century, one of the jewel thieves explains how it was done and the detectives leading the case tell how they eventually managed to track down their culprits.. On Monday, 17 February, 2003, Agim De Bruycker, then Commander of the police Diamond Squad in Antwerp, was greeted at his office by his colleague, Detective Patrick Peys. 'There has been a burglary,' he said. 'A safe has been broken open.' It was to prove something of an understatement. When they arrived at the Diamond Center, they were greeted by a scene of chaos, with panicking dealers wondering if their diamonds, gold or money was gone. Two floors below, carnage awaited. 'I saw a steel door a foot thick, standing open,' Patrick recalls. 'Inside, the walls were covered with individual lockers. The majority were cracked and opened. I was standing in front of Ali Baba's cave.' The floor was scattered with bank notes and small emeralds that the thieves deemed not worth their time. Nearly all of the 189 safe deposit boxes had been raided. The heist immediately hit the news headlines and the pressure was on the police to find out who had done it. But the mystery was also how had they done it? 'The combination on the safe door was changed weekly and that dial would give you 100million possibilities,' says Patrick. In addition was a clever magnetic alarm system consisting of two metal plates – one attached to the vault door, the other to the door jamb. If someone tried to open the door while the alarm was still activated, it would break the magnetic field and the alarm would set off. The Sun's reporter blags London landmarks Inside the vault was a light detector and a motion and heat detector. The light sensor had been covered with black duct tape and the motion sensor sprayed with hairspray. The 13-storey building had 24 cameras working day in, day out. The footage for each day was stored on a videocassette but the ones for February 15 and 16 – the weekend of the heist – were missing. 'I was thinking this had to be an inside job,' says Agim. 'You had the security, two concierges and the building manager. We started investigating them thoroughly and searched their houses but in the end, we had to clear them all. We had no idea who had committed the crime. Then, suddenly, in the afternoon, I got a telephone call.' Breakthrough 12 12 A shopkeeper had found a bag of rubbish dumped in The Floordambos Woods, 25 miles south of Antwerp, where he liked to go to feed the rabbits and fish. Inside was a lot of torn paper with words like Antwerp and Diamonds. Realising it wasn't the usual type of fly-tipped rubbish he called the police. 'That call changed everything,' says Patrick. 'The bags also contained some very small green emerald stones, banknotes, wrenches and flashlights as well as some left over food – pasta, cheese, a half-eaten salami sandwich, wine. This was strange because I don't think they had a picnic in the vault room. The food was probably from a hideout.' Another critical piece of evidence found in the woods was the casing of the video cassettes kept at the Diamond Center. But the tape had been removed. A search of the highway between Antwerp and Brussels found that the tape had been dumped en-route. Experts from Sony were able to reinstall it into the casing so that it could be watched. It was a big moment that promised to show the thieves at work. 'We had all the investigators together, along with my superiors, for the screening,' recalls Agim. 'The tape is put into the cassette player, the film starts… and it was a porn movie.' I've never been so disappointed in a porn movie as I was then! Patrick Peys 'I've never been so disappointed in a porn movie as I was then!' adds Patrick. The police started piecing together the torn paper found in the rubbish bag. Some of it formed a document, written in Italian, which was a permit to install a security system at an office in the Diamond Center. The document was issued by the Italian diamond company Damoros Preziosi. The company had an office in the building that had been rented for two years but cupboards and desks were empty. 'The building manager didn't know the man who rented that office very well but she could tell us that he was an Italian businessman named Leonardo Notarbartolo. She had no address for him,' says Agim. When police went through CCTV footage in the building, she was eventually able to point him out. Like many other dealers who rented space in the building, he regularly went down to the vault to store his jewels. He never spoke to anyone and never attracted attention. But a check with Italian police found he was a well-known criminal with convictions for burglary and jewellery theft. They believed he was living somewhere in Turin. Paper scraps from the rubbish bag also revealed an envelope with the name Elio D'Onorio with an address close to Rome. He turned out to be an alarm specialist and a known I talian criminal. The rubbish also revealed a receipt from a hardware shop located between Antwerp and Brussels in which various items used in the robbery were used, such as an extendable mop that was found in the vault. The shop owner was able to provide the police with a description of the man who bought them and an identikit picture matched that of D'Onorio. A colleague of Agim and Patrick's showed them a file he had on an attempted burglary that had taken place at the Diamond Center six years earlier by a man pretending to be a diamond dealer who was also from Turin called Ferdinando Finotto. 'The School of Turin' Marci Martino, head of the Flying Squad in Turin, informed the Antwerp detectives about a group specialising in thefts of banks and bank vaults there that journalists have coined, 'The School of Turin.' 'He explained that it was a bunch of people, each specialising in some form of criminal behaviour,' says Patrick. 'So, they picked who they needed according to his or her speciality.' 'It made a lot of sense to us,' says Agim. 'Certainly given the way the thieves had tackled all these security systems.' With three names now in the bag, Agim and Patrick began working out how they thought the operation had been done. But their version and that of Notarbartolo's differ. The Antwerp detectives believe that entrance was gained from the garage that led through a connecting door directly into the building on the ground floor. A modified Allen key, found in the rubbish at Floordambos, opened the door when they tested it. Career criminal 12 12 12 And in an exclusive interview, Leonardo Notarbartolo tells the documentary makers his side of the story. Born in Palermo, he got into crime at the age of six when he stole 5,000 lire from a cowherd. 'In the 80s, I opened my first jewellery shop,' he says. 'I started going back and forth to Antwerp to buy gemstones and got an apartment there and an office and safe deposit box at the Diamond Center.' He admits to being part of the gang who carried out the heist but named a mysterious figure who he claimed was the mastermind of the crime. If I took photos inside the vault, he would give me 100,000 dollars. I said, 'Okay. I'm in' Leonardo Notarbartolo 'I am a participant. The mastermind was someone who went by the name of Alessandro, although that probably wasn't his real name. He took me for coffee one day, saying that he knew who I was and that we had met in Italy, and gave me a pen with a tiny little camera inside and said that if I took photos inside the vault, he would give me 100,000 dollars. I said, 'Okay. I'm in.'' In February 2001, two years before the heist, Notarbartolo entered the vault and took pictures of the safe deposits and the alarms systems. He was then asked to join the gang for a share of the spoils worth at least $15m dollars each. 'I had always wanted to be part of something like this. It was too tempting,' he says. 'Alessandro took me to an industrial area where there are warehouses. We go inside and there are three people there who he introduces me to. There were the four of us main ones - The Monster, The Genius, the Key Master and me. The fifth was My Friend. Agim De Bruycker 'The first guy was a master when it came to locks and alarms. He is 1.93 metres tall, well-built. That's why I call him The Monster. The other, The Genius, was a little man, really intelligent. He was half hacker and half computer geek and an expert in alarms. Then there's the one that seems a bit of a thug. He can open any lock. I called him The Key Master. 'They pull aside some big plastic sheets and I see this place which looks just like the vault. It's exactly the same, with the sensors correctly positioned. 'The gang was coming in and out of the Diamond Center to make copies of keys and to check security systems at least 30 times and never left a trace. 'When The Genius realised there was a light bulb above the vault door, he had a micro camera inserted in it to record images of the combination lock below. In the boiler room were some fire extinguishers and The Genius took one and modified it by cutting the bottom and inserting a receiver inside which transmitted images from the camera to us.' The heist Three days before the heist, Notarbartolo, who had graduated from a spy pen to a video camera inside a small bag, used hairspray to fog up the sensor. 'We didn't enter the way the police think we did. We entered from Pelikaanstraat, where there is a space behind the Diamond Center to park cars. We skirted along the walls of the Diamond Center and went up a stepladder that we took with us, to the first floor. The Genius had bypassed the alarm that was on this balcony. 'On the day of the hit, they wanted me to stay outside to keep a watch for any police. There were the four of us main ones - The Monster, The Genius, the Key Master and me. The fifth was My Friend. He has excellent qualities in our line of work. 12 'Inside the building they deactivated the two side cameras and then checked the images from the micro-camera to see the last combination that was entered that night. The biggest problem was the magnet alarm. But The Genius had already studied it.' This part of the story tallies with that of the police. 'Some work had been done on the magnetic alarm,' Agim confirms. 'The screws had been removed and shortened so that from the outside everything looks fine but on the inside the screws are not attaching to the door anymore. "Instead, double-sided tape was used. On the night of the heist, they pulled the plates away from the vault door together. The magnetic field is still intact, the alarm is still on but they are able to open the vault door.' Each safe deposit box has an individual key and a three-digit dial but this was by-passed by a cleverly manufactured drill that looked a bit like a corkscrew with two metal bars with which the thieves could force each box open. After a few hours inside, the gang made their get-away in the car driven by Notarbartolo, back to his apartment where they celebrated with some food and wine. 12 How the heist was carried out Two years before Notarbartolo posed as a diamond merchant and rented an office in the Diamond Center, as well as a safety deposit box in the vault. He used his position to pay regular visits to the vault, taking pictures of the alarm systems and sensors and memorising the building's layout. Months before A secret camera was placed in the lighbulb above the vault door, to monitor the combinations used on the lock, which were changed every week. A receiver was placed in a fire extinguisher in a nearby boiler room to transmit images from the camera. Notarbartolo claims the gang regularly met at a warehouse where a full size replica vault had been built, to hone their plan. Days before Notarbartolo used hairspray on the thermal-motion sensors to disable them. The screws on the magnetic plates that locked the vault were loosened. Day of the robbery The gang gained access from a space behind the centre, using a stepladder to climb to a balcony on the first floor. Inside, they used a long, two-part, three-dimensional key along with the vault's combination to open the main door. One plate of the magnetic lock was unscrewed to bypass the alarm system when the vault door was opened. A polystyrene shield was used to block the infrared ray of the motion sensor. The ceiling light sensor was covered with duct tape so the gang could turn the lights on inside the vault. A custom-made, hand-cranked drill was used to open 109 of the 189 safe deposit boxes within the vault. The gang then emptied the contents of the boxes into duffel bags and left the building through a street exit. Before leaving, they stole the security footage from the Diamond Center's office. According to Notarbartolo, it was his job to dispose of things snatched that they did not need. But he says that while he was in the shower someone also threw the remains of their meal into the bags without him realising. When he and his friend took them to the wood, they were startled by a noise and instead of burning it, as intended, dumped it there and fled. The following day the gang met up in Brescia, Italy to divvy up the bounty and, such was Notarbartolo's confidence that he was not on the police's radar, he then went back to Antwerp to return the hired car. The cops were startled when the building manager of the Diamond Center rang them to say that Leonardo Notarbartolo was actually standing in the building right now. Our main suspect returned to Antwerp and was standing in the building that he had robbed a week before. It was unbelievable Agim De Bruycker 'Our main suspect returned to Antwerp and was standing in the building that he had robbed a week before. It was unbelievable,' says Agim. The police rushed there and he was arrested. He reluctantly gave them the address of his apartment and when they drove there, three people were coming out – Notarbartolo's wife and two men, one carrying a rolled up carpet on his shoulder. They were stopped and inside the carpet were small green emeralds. A 'pure fantasy' A search of the apartment found a bag with a hole in the side, perfect for concealing a video camera. 'We also found a receipt from a local supermarket in Antwerp with different food items like wine, pasta, cheese and salami of the type found back in Floordambos,' says Agim. 'We matched Mr Notarbartolo's DNA with that found on the half-eaten salami sandwich. 'Based on the telephone records from SIM cards and on the DNA profiles, we were able to identify four people that were 100 per cent involved in this crime – Ferdinando Finotto (The Monster), Elio D'Onorio (The Genius) and a third person, Pietro Tavano (My Friend) - an old friend of Mr Notarbartolo and also a member of The School of Turin. The fourth person was Notarbartolo.' Agim believes much of Notarbartolo's account is pure fantasy. 'Spy pens? Replica vaults? That isn't the story of a crime, it's more like the script of a movie. There was no super criminal lurking in the background. It was just him.' Notarbartolo received a 10-year prison service and served six years, before being released in 2009. His wife was never charged. Three other gang members were jailed for five years. But the true value of the heist is still a mystery. 'No diamonds or money were recovered,' says Agim. 'We came up with the figure of $100m but I'm sure that the amount is much higher than that.' Stolen: Heist of the Century is on Netflix from August 8 12
