Foiled nuclear facility heist was a team effort

A few days ago, I posted about a mysterious failed armed robbery at South Africa's Pelindaba nuclear facility.

More details have emerged.

On Nov. 14, the South African newspaper Sowetan reported that the facility was hit by two armed teams in that night:

The raid last week on Pelindaba, the nerve centre of South Africa’s nuclear industry, was an apparently coordinated attack by two separate armed groups and not a simple attempted robbery as previously announced.

Just after midnight on Thursday, two separate groups breached the fence of one of the most highly guarded facilities in South Africa.

Rob Adam, chairman of the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa), which runs the 2300ha facility near Hartbeespoort, said yesterday that the armed men clearly had prior knowledge of one of the most elaborate security systems in South Africa.

Both groups fired on security personnel who tried to stop them. One group of four cut through the outside fence and bypassed the 10 000 volt security fence and electronic alarm.

“I am not saying it is an inside  job, but that whoever did this  knows these systems very, very  well,” said Adam. [Sowetan]

As I was composing this post, commenter djysrv alerted me of the NYT coverage of the Pelindaba raids, which also ran on Nov. 14.

Comments

[mudkitty]

Ah, what's a little uranium between friends?