Books stolen during ‘Mission Impossible’ burglary in Feltham returned to their owners

Stolen books worth more than £2.5 million, including works by Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, have been returned to their owners.

They were taken during a “highly sophisticated burglary” in which two members of an organised crime group abseiled from the roof of a warehouse in Feltham, west London, in January 2017.

Police said the haul of 240 books was transported to Romania by a criminal gang, who were all Romanian nationals, and 12 men were jailed in October after being convicted of committing a series of burglaries.

Kingston Crown Court heard that among their raids was the “deliberate targeting” of customs clearing centre Frontier Forwarding in Feltham, inside which were works of “immense cultural significance” due to be shipped to the US for a specialist book auction.

They belonged to three book dealers, two Italian and one German, and the books were later found buried under a house in rural Romania.

All but four of the 240 books have been recovered after detectives from Scotland Yard travelled to Bucharest following an investigation with authorities in Romania and Italy.

One of the victims Alessandro Riquier said: “After three-and-a-half years, finally this terrible story has a very happy ending.

“I went to Bucharest full of hope but also a little bit scared about the damaged books.

“I was very excited and it was a great joy to handle my books again and to see that apart from one missing, and four books with variable damage, all the books were in good condition.”

Detective Inspector Andy Durham, who led the investigation, said: “It was lovely to see the joy of each victim being reunited with these irreplaceable books.”