Britain’s largest cash robbery goes to trial

updated 10:08 p.m. ET June 26, 2007

LONDON - The trial of eight people charged in Britain's largest cash robbery began Tuesday, with prosecutors arguing the robbers were pursuing a life of luxury and idleness.

The thieves were motivated by "greed, pure and simple," prosecutor John Nutting told jurors.

Nutting said the robbery, at the depot of Securitas Cash Management Ltd. in Tonbridge, Kent, about 30 miles southeast of London, unfolded when the robbers abducted the facility's manager.

On Feb. 22, 2006, Colin Dixon was stopped by what appeared to be a police car as he drove home from work. His wife was waiting with dinner, and their child was in bed, the jury was told.

While Dixon was kidnapped and held at an isolated farm, his family was lured away by other men posing as police, who said he had been injured in a car accident. The family was held separately while the $106 million robbery was carried out.

"There is nothing very courageous about kidnapping women and small children," Nutting said.

Employees in the cash depot were held at gunpoint and threatened with death if they did not follow instructions, Nutting said.

Nutting said two other men, in custody in Morocco, will stand trial next year with three women, and British police were still looking for two men who had disappeared after the robbery.

The trial resumes Wednesday.

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