The yacht eventually broke down and had to be rescued by the Barbados coast guard. With Biggs in Barbadian custody, the soldiers congratulated themselves on a job well done. Except … Barbados didn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK either. In all fairness, everyone thought they had signed one in 1979, but it turned out the Barbados government never bothered to ratify it. Also, the kidnappers took Biggs all the way to Barbados in the first place because one of the mercenaries wanted to have his wedding there. Basically, any other Caribbean island, and the plan would have worked fine, but instead Biggs was sent back to Brazil, while the kidnappers themselves were arrested and deported. As is Barbadian criminal tradition.
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A False Flag Plot Was Foiled When A Neo-Nazi Accidentally Brought A Gun To The Airport And Hid It In A Bathroom
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A False Flag Plot Was Foiled When A Neo-Nazi Accidentally Brought A Gun To The Airport And Hid It In A Bathroom
In January 2017, a maintenance man opened a duct in the ceiling of a bathroom in the Vienna Airport and a loaded gun fell out. Mystified, the Austrian police decided to stick an alarm on the vent and see what happened (if you’re wondering why they didn’t put a camera there, think about it for a second). A few weeks later, they burst into the bathroom to find German soldier “Franco A.” standing on a toilet, peering into the duct. Franco claimed he had found the gun in a bush, shoved it in his bag, and forgot about it until he went to the airport. Rather than miss his flight, he hid it in the duct to retrieve later, because why waste a gun, you know?
Nobody bought that, but here’s where it gets really crazy. Franco’s prints identified him as a recent Syrian immigrant to Germany, even though the guy standing in front of the authorities was definitely a native German who had served in the army for years.
Austrian Police Any impressions that he was an asshole based on his facial hair were proven true.
Apparently, Franco left Germany in 2015, then recrossed the border, claiming to be a refugee. Despite speaking no Arabic, he was granted asylum in Germany, and then spent two years living a double life, dutifully serving in the army while also traveling Europe to collect welfare and establish an identity as a Syrian refugee. Perhaps due to the whole “speaking no Arabic” thing, he picked “David Benjamin, fruit seller” as his totally Syrian-sounding persona.
Further investigation led German authorities to believe that Franco was part of a group of neo-Nazi German soldiers who had been stockpiling guns and ammunition while drawing up a list of targets. The plan was for Franco to murder the justice secretary (or a former president, they were playing it by ear) and then escape. His fingerprints would then lead investigators to the Syrian identity, and the crime would be blamed on immigrants, thus kick-starting World War III or something. The terrorist cell allegedly worked on that plan for two years, and it was all foiled because some idiot fake fruit seller forgot that you can’t bring found shrub guns to the airport.
A stunning amount of these plots might’ve gone better if the perps had just been using some Rosetta Stone.
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For more, check out 6 Daring Assassination Plots (Carried Out By Morons) and The 5 Most Hilariously Insane Secret Plots From History.
This is all just an elaborate plot to get you to follow us on Facebook.
