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Friday February 13, 2004

Two cargo thefts at KLIA within a week

BY NELSON BENJAMIN

SEPANG: Two separate cases of cargo thefts have been reported at the KL International Airport (KLIA) within a week.

In the first case, a lorry transporting RM2.5mil worth of computer parts was hijacked by armed robbers soon after it had left the KLIA cargo complex last week.

The second theft was reported early on Tuesday, when some US$100,000 (RM380,000) worth of gold wires en route to Thailand were carted away by robbers who held up a forklift driver at gunpoint at the KLIA’s Free Commercial Zone.

In the first case, two cars overtook and forced the lorry off the road along Jalan Salak, about six kilometres from KLIA.

The lorry was laden with about 23,000 units of LCD flat computer screens meant for a factory in Senawang.

The lorry's 43-year-old driver, suspecting something amiss, tried to drive off but the lorry was “sandwiched” between both cars.

Five men armed with parangs and axes forced the driver out of the lorry and used his shirt to blindfold him.

The driver was bundled into one of the cars and taken to Gombak.

He was dropped off at an orang asli village there.

In the second case, three robbers stopped the forklift driver at gunpoint and escaped with five boxes containing gold wires at about 1am.

The consignment was supposed to be on a flight bound for Bangkok that morning.

The robbers drove through a security checkpoint, manned by Malaysia Airport Bhd personnel, without stopping.

Cargo thefts at KLIA have reached a whopping RM25mil since the airport began operations in 1998.

Most of the cases were recorded between 1998 to 2000, with an average of RM500,000 worth of cargo, mainly computers, microchips, pearls, cosmetics, mobile phones and watches, stolen every month.

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