Northern Bank Robbery | Britain's Biggest Heists | S2E04

it was a brutal and audacious bank robbery using the maximum threat of violence and death terrifying commands were being administered to the ward family be calm don't look at me look at the floor here's how it's going to be it sent shock waves around the world just days before christmas in 2004 the theft of 26 and a half million pounds took place from the headquarters of the northern bank in belfast northern ireland this was one of the biggest cache robberies that had ever taken place in the world and it was done without the rory gang ever even having to enter the bank it was a high risk crime that required careful and lengthy planning carried out with such military precision the ira were quickly linked to the 26 and a half million pound bank raid the question of responsibility for the crime caused huge political fallout the business of peace and progress in northern ireland seemed impossible this is how one of britain's biggest heists helped change the political history of a country forever [Music] [Music] for decades northern ireland had been ripped apart by two groups the unionists and the republicans the conflict led to violence and bloodshed the british government wanted to strike a peace deal that would involve the sharing of power between the democratic unionist party and sinn fein the political wing of the ira in 2004 after long negotiations they seemed on the verge of an agreement that would settle the conflict and finally end the troubles in northern ireland but for now the troubles were far from over [Music] on sunday the 19th of december 2004 it was a cold wet and dark night in pole glass west belfast 23 year old bank worker chris ward lived at home with his parents gerard and rose ward chris's older brother gerard and his partner ursula were upstairs around 10 p.m that evening there was a knock at their front door [Music] chris came to the door and the unknown person uh inquired having any tickets for the celtic much chris at that time was the treasurer of a glasgow celtic supporters club in belfast so it wasn't an unusual inquiry for a stranger to make it the door in lockheed island county down kevin mcmullen and his wife karen were relaxing at their home that evening they too received a knock at their front door there were two policemen at the door they told karen that kevin's sister who lived in cookstown um had been killed in a car crash obviously this was shocking and distressing news in paul glass identifying himself as a celtic football supporter chris ward invited the stranger into his home [Music] chris was bundled back into the house and the front levering room was filled with upwards on six to eight meals in his front room and within seconds terrifying orders were being given uh to the family one of the first directions uh given to the ward family was that don't look at us look at the floor and they were told in certain terms that chris's very life depended upon their cooperativeness in lochin island the uniformed officers were invited into the mcmullen home uniformed officers was really just a front for the main the main gang who were hiding somewhere behind as soon as the door was opened they rushed into the house [Applause] get down there stay there don't move [Music] first thing they then did was to take kevin um to another room um where they tied him tied him up you're listening to me and um he was given some particularly rough treatment listen to me gonna do as i say you're good got your way understand karen was taken to a different room he was stripped put on the um or [ __ ] we'll put it on you understand get it all used to hurt you the more similar thing was what they told them they would do to his wife they used a term damage beyond repair and they also said to him that she would be shot in the head there could be no more direct or chilling threat to somebody than not they also said to kevin that if he made any attempt to raise the alarm he would be or his wife would be killed back in pole glass the criminal gang had imprisoned the terrified ward family all of their phones were taken from them their ability to make contact with the outside world was taken from them chris was then given very finite instructions and he was told to go upstairs and get his clothes for work and to get his bag packed that he wasn't going to be at home that night with his mind racing chris packed his clothes into a sports bag before returning downstairs fearful for chris's safety his family made a religious pledge a holy picture of the blessed virgin was present in the sitting room as it would be in many catholic homes in ireland as an expression of [Music] confidence in each other they swore upon the holy picture that they would be calm that they would cooperate and that they would get through this ordeal in one piece as a family chris ward was then abruptly removed from his home he was put into the back of the car and told to lie down and close his eyes he was told not to speak to anybody um he was threatened because your life depends upon this chris was terrified all he was thinking about was the family that he had left behind at home [Music] karen mcmullen was taken away whilst kevin was kept in the house bound and helpless she was put into a car and then taken to a house somewhere she was blindfolded so she had no idea where she was in a state of panic and confusion chris ward had no idea where he was being taken from his home in pole glass until the car finally arrived at its destination in lochen island and the home of his work colleague kevin mcmullan there was no other house for perhaps a half mile in a circle immediately upon seeing his supervisor and work colleague kevin mcmullen he then realized that the kidnap of himself and now his colleague must have been in relation to their place of work at the cash center in the northern bank as the two men immediately realized their terrifying ordeal was related directly to their jobs at the northern bank they were told they would be helping the criminal gang steal money from the bank's vault [Music] northern bank is one of the leading banks in northern ireland with 82 branches across the country it is also one of the four banks in the country permitted to issue its own banknotes [Music] kevin mcmullan was employed as an assistant bank manager and chris ward worked as a supervisor both men were key holders to the bank's vaults [Music] throughout the night chris and kevin were interrogated in separate rooms as to the processes within the cash center and uh a well-worn technique i would imagine for uh kidnappers and robbers of this type was that interrogators would go from one room to the other and say you're not telling us everything here we're being told something else from your colleague the psychological pressure and fear that the two bank employees must have felt on this night must have been absolutely intense how long does it take you to get downstairs they had been separated from their families they were at this time living in fear they didn't know where their families were they didn't know if they would ever see them again they knew what they wanted to do their knowledge frightened chris and through that process of dual and separate interrogations uh all information with regards to the cash center systems was volunteered by both chris and cabin out a the of this sort presumably they had done um similar crimes in the past they were totally ruthless um totally without compunction or morality and they knew that the success of the crime was based on instilling this degree of fear within the employees and they had no doubt and no hesitation in doing that [Music] when the interrogations were over kevin and chris were given a set of instructions both chris and kevin were given mobile phones and were told to expect certain phone calls at certain times throughout the day and on receipt of those phone calls they would be given further directions the criminal gang finally left the bank workers alone they were left on absolutely no doubt that for their own personal safety and for the safety of their families they would cooperate and be as calm as possible to carry out the wishes and directions of the kidnappers monday the 20th of december 2004 kevin mcmullen and chris ward dressed for work as normal but there would be nothing normal about their day they went to work the next day from kevin's house in kevin's car that monday was the 20th of december and therefore was a pre-christmas shopping day it would have been frantic activity in the car center and as a result both chris and kevin were able to settle into their day's work ahead of them they both had busy days to get through you can only imagine how difficult it must have been for them to be at work that day and go to meet all their colleagues have the the normal exchanges you would have with your work colleagues but knowing all the time this terrible secret and knowing what they had to do exhausted and anxious kevin and chris nervously awaited their next set of instructions terrified that at any point they would be found out and fearing for their families they had no idea how they would be expected to pull off one of britain's biggest heists listen to me just days before christmas in 2004 two employees of the northern bank and their families were abducted and held hostage by a criminal gang who threatened them with violence and death fearful for their families kevin mcmullan and chris ward were coerced into helping the criminal gang steal a large amount of money from the northern bank's vaults as far as we know the the two employees were told to make contact with the gang by phone on three occasions throughout the day um just to tell them everything was going as planned and just uh probably as a little reminder to them as well that we still have your families and don't forget about that first phone call was to ensure that israeli suspicions is everything okay is the plan still as previously agreed the second phone call was just a further reassurance and then the direction that chris would be expected to walk out of the cash center with his sports hold all that he had taken to work that they filled with cash and the last phone call was to finalize that this was in fact ready to go as instructed by the robbers kevin dismissed his staff early so that they could carry out the first phase of the robbery no doubt the workforce were quite glad to have an early day it was just before christmas they probably didn't think there was anything strange and being sent home slightly early once the staff had left they followed the gang's instructions to fill chris's sports bag with cash [Music] kevin mcmullen took it upon himself to fill the bag with cash from one of the vaults kevin was aware of a blind spot in the cash center where he would be able to fill the bag without being witnessed on any monitoring system that the internal external security people would have had access to [Music] chris then took the bag and walked out the back door [Music] no passwords no security measures no stop and search just walked straight out the door with the hold all over his shoulder [Music] chris ward left the bank at the wellington street exit and walked a few yards up the road to a bus stop on upper queen street they would meet an unknown individual there and that chris would hand the bag over to him that there was a pre-set phrase of words i think it was have everything in for christmas chris would say yes hope all's well with you the unknown meal then lifted the bag and walked off this was seen as a dummy run could they get the money out of the bank without alerting suspicion whenever this dummy run went ahead without any any problems they then moved on to the more the more substantial part of the robbery oddly the bank's security never stopped or questioned chris ward the fact that chris was able to walk out at his leisure with a sports hold all filled with cash speaks volumes as to the inherent insecurity of the northern bank at that time with the successful completion of the dummy run the gang were confident with the main robbery a further phone call was then received and chris and kevin were told that the robbers intended bringing a white van into the cash center the robber's original intention was to bring the white van actually into what was called the bullion bay now kevin and chris could not for the life of them fathom where they would even attempt to do that as they inherently thought that the boolean bay would have been covered by cctv as it transpired that day the brilliant bay vault door uh broke uh at about three o'clock throughout the phone calls chris and kevin related to the robbers that if you're still in town and bring the van and you'll not get it into the bullion bay because the the vault has broken another security guard van i think hit it but undeterred the robbers were determined to proceed with their plan chris and kevin were told that it was up to chris and kevin to bring the cash out to the van so this was bringing even more stress because the success of the robbery now lay with them being able to get the cash physically out of the bank it's just before christmas the money was due to be distributed to all the 95 northern bank branches across a province so the vaults were loaded with up to probably about 30 million pounds of money but how would kevin and chris be able to get such huge quantities of cash past security they were able to inform the local security officer that there was a delivery of rubbish that was to be collected and that they had to bring the rubbish out to the delivery van chris and kevin then set about making the green boxes containing hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash look like rubbish and this involved one simple technique a green box with no white security sticker was rubbish a green box with a weight security sticker had millions of pounds on it so after five o'clock chris and kevin were in the cash center by themselves albeit remotely monitored by a cctv bank that should have been closely inspected by another security guard it wasn't however chris and kevin were to know that what the cctv shows is kevin and chris peeling the white stickers off green boxes and thereby determining that they were rubbish for collection they also three and i think kevin lifted a broken uh hoover that had been sitting in the cash center for weeks and months a broken chair was brought up and the pre-tense of rubbish being collected was not hard to convince to the security officer on the gib they loaded the green boxes onto large trolleys the trolleys were rolled from the cash center into the building bay lift into the building bay and from there it is simply a roller door that separates the billion bay from the public street at 7 05 pm the robbers white van reversed from upper queen street into wellington street the trolleys of cash were then loaded up and rolled onto the van it was that easy such was their satisfaction with how the day was running they decided to send the van back down to be refilled this was not in the original directions from the robbers this caused both chris and kevin serious fears and considerations that they could not possibly get away with wheeling two loads of rubbish out this time kevin and chris were instructed to wrap the trolleys with black bin liners to conceal the cash both chris and kevin were given black sally drop by the robbers and were told that they would be coming back and to go and prepare more trolleys filled with more cash and to expect their return within half an hour exhausted kevin and chris returned to the cash centre they then went back to the cash center and set about loading up the second trolleys for the second van run kevin effectively phoned the uh control room and told them that the delivery van was coming back for more rubbish kevin and chris loaded up the trolleys and wrapped them in black sally drop and just as per the first run brought them onto the brilliant bay left loaded them up into the brilliant bay actually received a phone call from the control room advising your white vans here get the trolleys up and they they did that the robbers van had returned for the second time having loaded the van with the cash the white van then drove from wellington street turning left onto upper queen street and right onto howard street before disappearing along the grovena road the robbers had just stolen a staggering 26 and a half million pounds in cash the largest amount in british criminal history this was one of the biggest cash robberies that had ever taken place in the world and it was done without the robbery gang ever even having to enter the bank but for kevin and chris their ordeal was not yet over they had obeyed the criminal gang but would the gang keep their end of the deal and release their families unharmed [Music] the families of two employees of the northern bank in northern ireland were abducted and held hostage by a criminal gang whilst the bank workers were coerced into delivering the money to the robbers after successfully completing the robbery the criminal gang instructed chris and kevin to return to the ward family home chris ward's family members were released but no one knew what the gang had done with karen 24 hours after she was first abducted karen mcmullen was finally freed karen was taken to a forest drum cara forest which is a very remote location um one county down she's suffering from massive hypothermia as well she's been taken from her home kept overnight kept for almost 24 hours blindfolded no idea where she is no idea where her husband is no idea if her husband is safe no idea if she'll ever see her husband again you can only imagine the terror that must have been going on in her mind and then when she's eventually released she dropped in the middle of a forest [Music] the police service for northern ireland the psni arrived at the northern bank soon after the alarm was raised they were shocked by the scale and audacity of the crime and launched an unprecedented investigation it would be one of the largest in the country's history i think the view would be that they were caught napping they didn't expect it the intelligence had not been there that told them it was going to happen at that time policing in northern ireland would have been seen as an intelligence bow and how much the police knew in advance in this case they knew nothing at all they were caught absolutely cold and they had to start from literally from scratch the next day and start to think who did this how did they do it and can we catch them there was an almost instantaneous media blackout the police would say nothing about it at all so far probably 12 hours or more nothing was reported but news of the robbery was spreading fast the rumors were rife and belfast at the time in many ways the journalists were hearing about the event before the police were putting any information out i i established early the next morning a robbery had taken place but that was all the police would say but we were we were told very quickly from other sources that the amount that had been stolen was in the tens of millions of pounds this automatically and straightaway made it different from any other bank robbery or crime of that sort that we'd ever reported upon in northern ireland it was absolutely unique and its scale and its audacity and in the scope of what they were able to achieve within 24 hours it was a main news story not only across northern ireland but across the whole of the uk and across much of the world as well with global interest in the amount of cash stolen and the terrifying threats used in the crime the pressure was mounting on the psni to quickly find those responsible and bring them to justice the scale and the audacity of the robbery and the level of organization and the amount of personnel that it took to carry this robbery only an organization like the provisional ira could have done could have done it there were no other criminal gangs at this time in northern ireland that would have had sophistication to do something like the northern bank robbery the ira was a paramilitary organization who wanted to bring about a united ireland separate from the uk their extreme political strategy included killing british soldiers and bombing cities across the uk but they were also involved in major organized criminal activities including kidnappings and robberies two main things point to having been in the ira one is the manner of taking people hostage and holding them hostage well someone who's related to them plays a part in the actual activity itself there's a standard year-by-year month-by-month operation at the ira carryout and it's not easy to do that effectively it requires a certain amount of near military precision which only the ira have been able to affect on a regular basis in the history of northern ireland this is known as tiger kidnapping tiger kidnapping is a low-risk high lucrative way of roaming um a bank or any other financial institution no matter how sophisticated um the security is at any um at any bank this soft point will always be the people who work there if you can establish who the the right person is um and and still within them the fear that you're going to do serious harm to a member of their family then essentially you can get them to do whatever you want to do it is reported that the ira had carried out a number of tiger kidnapping crimes a method showing a high success rate second is the scale of the thing there would have been a lot of people involved in this operation it's not something which could have been done by five blokes having a go at a bank robbery it was something which involved a large-scale operation of intelligence in advance of cleaning up afterwards of what you do with the money once you've got it of various different people involved in the kidnapping of someone the intimidation interrogation of someone of the actual robbery of having people who are going to be guarding in terms of what happens if the police intervene in other words this is a large-scale operation and the only organization that i'm aware of in northern ireland's history which would have been able to carry this out in 2004 was the provisionals on christmas eve four days after the heist the police searched a number of prominent republican homes and they opened their christmas presents under the christmas tree in front of their children presumably looking for money within them the searchers failed to find any northern bank money the quick breakthrough they were desperately hoping for was looking less likely it was going to be a long investigation as any crime scene the first thing the police will look for is any traces of forensic or scientific evidence that will link any possible suspect to the crime the people who carried out this crime cut their nails they brought bleach mops detergents and buckets with them they spent more time apparently cleaning the crime scenes and they did talking to or interrogating the people they had taken hostage they were absolutely relentless and this pursuit of making sure that the crime scenes would be left forensically clean and that's exactly how it was the police examined thousands of hours of cctv footage but the bank's cctv proved problematic first of all the cash center or the vault the cctv in there was impeccable every angle was covered every single action that chris and kevin undertook can be reviewed and monitored however the cctv in the brilliant bay the second area wasn't working and had been broken for some months and the third phase of cctv was the external cctv at the back of wellington street right at the back of the vault doors of the cash centre where the white van collected the cash there is no cctv at all from the external cameras of the northern bank so in effect there was no northern bank cctv whatsoever of the white van [Music] with a lack of firm evidence the police were struggling to convert their intelligence into evidence but such was their certainty of the ira's involvement that on the 7th of january 2005 chief constable hugh ord held a press conference the provisional ira were responsible for this crime and all main lines of inquiry currently undertaken are in that direction there was no doubt in his mind he was 100 certain he would not have said it because this was not any normal policing environment he knew that by making that statement what he was going to say was going to have massive political implications way above and beyond anything that happened in the police investigation the british government and other major political figures supported this accusation but the ira vehemently denied any involvement the ira forthrightly if concisely denied that they had been involved but the ira throughout much of its history has frequently denied things which are embarrassing or damaging to it there have been murders there have been bombings there have been abductions where they said it wasn't us and then it's demonstrably unquestionably been proved subsequently that they were so there is no serious observer who doubts that the provisional ira carried out the northern bank robbery the republican party sinn fein also refuted the ira's involvement champion's reaction um to sue yord blaming the ira was one of anger and fury they demanded that if the chief constable was going to say this publicly then he had to produce evidence to back it up and as far as they were concerned there was not one shred of evidence politically the bank robbery and its suggested links with the ira couldn't have come at a worse time at the time the british government were holding private talks with sinn fein leaders jerry adams and martin mcguinness to broker a peace deal between them and the unionists peace process talks in northern ireland are always partly precarious because there's a lack of trust between the two communities because there's such a long bitter and bloody hostility between the rival political factions in this part of the world immediately after the robbery there was a shock in terms of this having happened at this particular moment people had been confident that maybe shin fame were leading the ioa away from acts of violence away from intimidatory politics and then suddenly you found an organization carrying out the largest bank robbery in uk history peace seemed impossible the british prime minister tony blair made it clear that a complete end to all criminality and paramilitary activity was necessary for peace to be restored blair saw this as his legacy and he devoted more time to it than any prime minister ever has or ever will um so the door was always open for republicans and that was quite a thing because it was only a few years previously the ira had been trying to bomb downing street so for tony blair to open his door to shin fan in that way was seen as a huge leap of faith imagine the score and it was then poured on them whenever they are i carried out the northern bank robbery and unionists were only too quick to say we told you this would happen the and a half million pound hall included just over 17 and a half million pounds of brand new banknotes and nearly nine million pounds of used notes following the raid northern bank announced that it would take the drastic step to withdraw all its banknotes this was an unprecedented move never before done in uk banking history they printed a whole new set of banknotes which surrounded hundreds of millions of pounds so basically what that meant they changed the color of the notes they changed the design of the notes so that no when they gave them people a certain amount of time through which they could use the old notes before they then became null and void so that's then raised the bar in terms of how could you launder so much money in so short a period of time all the old notes essentially became worthless the police knew the serial numbers and they were very confident that if that money appeared and the currency system anywhere in the world such where the financial systems that the money would be traced none of that money ever turned up anywhere um this leads the police to the very firm belief that the money was never used and so you it the the largest the largest theft of waste paper in history but despite the best efforts made by northern bank to print brand new notes to flush any stolen money out of the system the robbers had still managed to get away with nearly nine million pounds of used notes which if they spent quickly would forever be untraceable the ira for a long time has been running a serious financial empire and it's had operations whereby some of the money goes into quite legitimate businesses or buys houses or funds operations which are in themselves legitimate but which are funded with money procured through criminal or ira related operations eleven months after the bank robbery the police investigation was no closer to catching the individual criminal gang members until suspicion fell upon a bank worker believed to be the inside man [Music] during the investigation into the cash robbery of 26 and a half million pounds from the northern bank the police service of northern ireland announced that the provisional irish republican army was responsible for the raid despite the ira and sinn fein's denial the british government and major political figures supported this trust and confidence in the peace process had been damaged but despite the lack of any evidence the police persevered with their investigation in the hope of tracking down the individuals who were responsible for orchestrating the highest [Music] there seemed to be no immediate progress investigation never mind a breakthrough but no sense that was going anywhere they were moving towards anything the pressure became unbearable on the police the police investigation moved its attention to finding the inside man they had all the detail of the two employees they had the detail of who was going to be working at like the detail of how to get into the vault and they did detail of how to get away with the money all of that presumably came from someone who had a very detailed knowledge of what went on with and within that bank initially all northern bank workers including kevin mcmullen and chris ward were considered as suspects once it began to scratch below the surface it was clear that mcmullen was not involved the the nature of the ordeal it suffered um basically disqualified him straight away if he was the inside man then he wouldn't have made his hem and his wife go through what they had done the psni focused their attention on chris ward there was a feeling certainly within the police that the ordeal which had been suffered by the ward family had not been quite as traumatic although the family had been taken hostage they didn't seem to have received the same rough treatment the guns were not produced in the same way that they were with the mcmullen family chris ward was arrested 11 months after the northern bank robbery he was held in under him serious crime suite for eight days at that time he was the first person in irish history to be held beyond seven days all of the atrocities which occurred in the history of uh the troubles here were investigated on arrest by police within seven days but for the first time ever police extended the detention of the suspect beyond that seven days it was like a glass ceiling that had never been broken before the police questioned him numerous times chris ward came from an area of west belfast poleglash which would be considered to be quite a republican stronghold and certainly some people within a within that community would believe that the police would have a or at that time would have had a pre-destined prejudice against people from that community but the police believed they had one piece of crucial information that pointed the finger of blame firmly at chris ward the police case then became more apparent and it seemed to then revolve around uh a circumstantial case namely that chris had prepared the staff router and that crystal therefore prepared this with the robbery in mind and that therefore that spoke to his guilt the psni felt convinced they had the right man for the police to charge chris ward with carrying out the robbery they obviously believed he was intricate and right in the middle of it as opposed to being the periphery or just being a an inside man who who passed on some information based on what they charged him with they awfully thought he was heavily involved in the planning of this after eight days the police decided to charge chris with the false imprisonment of his own family and also the false imprisonment of kevin and karen mcmullen and then he was also charged with the armed robbery of 26.5 million pounds from the northern bank on the 8th of september 2008 chris ward stood trial for the northern bank robbery the key is unravelled as each witness getting to give their evidence because the malevolent and disingenuous interpretations that police had sought to put during their interviews of chris were not coming across in the evidence and the reason for that was because they didn't exist in real life they may have existed in police strategy rooms but they didn't exist in the courtroom the case against ward was entirely circumstantial there was no dna evidence against him whatsoever there was no witness evidence nobody had pointed the finger at him but what the prosecution believed was that by pulling together a number of strands of what happened his behavior on the night they could paint a compelling picture that he was involved in the crime the road rotor that chris ward prepared did not have chris or kevin on duty for the late shift on the monday which was the shift that the robbers required control of so it was a fallacy to attempt to say that chris was guilty by virtue of their order that he created there had actually been changed by a senior manager which was nothing to do with ward and once that central plank of the prosecution case was taken away there was nothing else there and the prosecution rightly decided to review the decision to prosecute because they knew that the central thesis to their case didn't come alive with the witnesses when they gave their evidence to the best of their record election there could be no other consequence but on acquittal for mr ward the prosecution withdrew its case [Music] case dismissed the second day the prosecution decided that they were going to discontinue the prosecution and offer no further evidence the relief on his face was so emotional and tangible that it's it's a moment that will stay with me for a very long time the case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom the pps and the police would admit that now i'm sure um the only you have to you have to assume that it was based on some sort of uh whether it's a political motivation or a desperation at the time that they had this was such a huge crime they had to be seen to put somebody on trial but it was bounded on them so badly because whatever pressure or criticism they got for not making any be meaningful that was magnified whenever a case is brought to course and it collapses in force that's an increased tenfold the case was a pr disaster for the psni they had no evidence and no eyewitness they were unable to convict anyone for the northern bank robbery the ira seemed untouchable until they were linked to the brutal murder of a catholic man from belfast called robert mccartney who was stabbed outside a bar ira members said no one's going to talk to the police we're going to cover up the traces they're going to make sure no one can be prosecuted for this in other words this was actually an ira killing both of them had profound effects upon the way that people looked at the ira um the northern bank in terms of the way that that brought complete political ostracization um for the uh the provisional movement and for sinn fein um and robert mccartney and the public disguster was over what had happened in the wake of the northern bank robbery and the wake of the mccartney killing the ira and shin fein had to decide whether or not they were going to move into a different kind of politics decisively they'd already begun the process of actual decommissioning in 2001 in the wake of 9 11. in september 2005 the ira carried out the final act of decommissioning their weapons allowing the next step towards political unity and peace and in 2007 ian paisley unionist and martin mcguinness a republican nationalist former ira man came to be the first and deputy first ministers in northern ireland effectively the prime minister and the deputy prime minister of northern ireland in a way that brought together old enemies and seemed to set the seal on a new kind of politics where old enemies would disagree politically rather than fighting it out in a military or terroristic way the northern bank robbery had a profound impact upon the country's politics and helped bring peace to the people for the first time in generations we have stable government and we have people who are once opponents and hate each other sitting around the same table and making decisions about health and education we've got our own police force now which is ruled we've got our own department of justice so the these are things that at the time of the northern bank railway you couldn't have imagined would ever have happened the northern bank robbery contributed to the resolution of what used to be a violent conflict and what is now largely one that's carried out in terms of peaceful constitutional democratic methods one thing about the northern bank is different than any other bank robbery is that it is loaded with political symbolism and had a massive impact not just in the criminal world but the whole political spectrum in northern ireland it was one of those events that you knew nothing will ever be the same again and that's how it's been [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: True Crime Central

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Keywords: #EvilUnmasked, #OffTheFenceDocu, 72 hours, Dark Crime episodes, Discovery, Episodes, Free, Full, ID, Latest, Minds, Online, Series, TV, TVF series, The quiet boy, UK, Watch, Women, documentaries, documentary, justice by any means, snapped, Northern Bank Robbery, Britain's Biggest Heists, True Crime Central, true crime, crime, robbery

Id: p_4e1UMKXcw

Length: 47min 10sec (2830 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 13 2022