How Swiss museum heist was foiled by sting at London hotel

On the night of 1 June 2019, a grey Renault Koleos pulled up outside Geneva's Museum of Far Eastern Art.

Three men wearing ski masks, dark clothing and gloves got out and walked up the steps to the solid, wooden front door.

Dotted across four floors of an elegant 19th-Century townhouse, the museum - also known as the Baur Foundation - hosts an extensive, world-renowned collection of Chinese and Japanese artefacts.

The silence was shattered by the sound of a power tool as the gang took a saw and crowbar to the front door. Once they had crawled through their man-made hole they sprinted to display cases containing items from the imperial Ming Dynasty era, dating from the 14th Century.

After smashing the cases and cabinets they grabbed two bowls and a vase, scurried back to the entrance, crawled through the hole in the door, then jumped into the Renault and made their getaway into the night.

A judge overseeing a trial in Geneva this week said the heist "took less than a minute".

The gang left nothing behind that could suggest their identities, but, in their hurry to flee, one of the men scraped his stomach against the sides of the hole in the door - leaving traces of DNA behind.

That sample later returned a name: Stewart Ahearne, a father-of-five from Greenwich in south-east London who worked as a tradesman.

Records showed he took a British Airways flight from London City Airport to Geneva the day before the burglary. He had also hired a Renault SUV matching the description of the vehicle outside the museum.

Geneva detectives enlisted the help of London's Metropolitan Police and a team led by Det Ch Insp Matthew Webb then travelled to Europol in The Hague.

They were shown CCTV from outside the museum the day before the raid and