LONDON — With meticulous planning and remarkable good fortune, the thieves who broke into a safe deposit in London’s diamond district seemed to have pulled off the perfect jewel heist.
But their luck ran out Tuesday when more than 200 Scotland Yard officers closed in on them.
The nine arrests were a triumph for embattled detectives whose early work had been criticized because of an embarrassing failure to respond to a midnight alarm at the start of a holiday weekend. That gave the thieves more than 48 hours to carefully remove the contents of the safe used by jewelers in the Hatton Garden district.
The suspects, all British men between ages 43 and 76, were questioned after coordinated morning raids, Scotland Yard said.
It said bags containing a significant amount of high-value property were recovered at one of the addresses but did not assign a value to the heist.
The audacious robbery during Easter weekend fascinated Britain.
Dressed in fluorescent vests and hard hats, the thieves entered the high-security vault area in the London diamond district with bags and wheeled garbage bins for carrying off the booty.
To gain entry, they climbed down an elevator shaft and drilled through concrete walls that were 6 feet thick, later making off with the contents of 72 safety deposit boxes.
Commander Peter Spindler defended the police performance in the face of the earlier criticism.
“At times we’ve been portrayed as if we have acted like Keystone Cops, but I want to reassure you that in the finest traditions of Scotland Yard, these detectives have done their utmost to bring justice to the victims of this callous crime,” Spindler said.
Nonetheless, police took the unusual step of apologizing for mishandling the alarm.
“Our call-handling system and procedures for working with the alarm-monitoring companies were not followed,” they said. “Our normal procedures would have resulted in police attending the scene, and we apologize that this did not happen.”
Apparently no one took notice of the group as it went about its business in the diamond district, which was nearly deserted during the holiday weekend.
Security footage showed the men, wearing dust masks, entering and leaving the building repeatedly after their arrival late April 2.
They worked throughout the night and left Friday morning, returning Saturday night and leaving again Easter Sunday morning.
They had picked their spots carefully — local jewelers routinely store valuable gems in the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit facility overnight and on weekends. The crime was not discovered until the jewelry district sprang back to life Tuesday morning.
