Belfast family held hostage in £200,000 Brinks-Mat robbery

Police on both sides of the Irish border are investigating the theft of more than £200,000 from the money courier firm Brinks-Mat after a west Belfast family were kidnapped and held hostage. Details were emerging on Friday morning of how a woman and teenage boy were taken at gunpoint from their home while a man was forced to go to work at the security firm around 10pm on Wednesday. The employee was then made to hand over the money to the kidnap gang. His wife and son were taken to Castleblaney in the Irish Republic by the thieves and were freed by gardaí on Thursday. Paul Reynolds, RTÉ's crime correspondent, said the man was held at gunpoint from until Thursday morning. He made cash pickups throughout Thursday before handing over more than £200,000 to the gang. The woman and teenage boy were taken from Belfast to Mullyash, near Castleblayney, in the back of a van then locked in a shed. The kidnappers then set the van set alight. The fire was spotted by someone in the area who contacted gardaí. The man at the centre of the raid works as a driver for Brinks-Mat, a company that collects and delivers money to banks and other financial institutions. The family were not injured but are said to have been severely traumatised. There has been a series of so-called "Tiger kidnappings" carried out in Ireland over the last decade. In some cases the kidnap-robberies have been the work of republican paramilitaries, although in recent years non-political criminal gangs have adopted the same tactics for heists in the Irish Republic.