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It's A Gas
Europe's "sleeping gas thieves" strike again, according to a story in the Telegraph. This time it is reported that the UK's Foreign Office is warning Brits camping in France to install alarms on their caravan doors, following claims that tourists are being gassed by thieves who clean out their mobile homes while they are knocked out.
">Ananova reports that raiders "leaked the harmless but potent gas through vents of the van" as a couple from Wiltshire slept. By morning, all their belongings were gone.
The FO warns that tourists should stay only in official caravan and camp sites: The advice comes after one couple lost cash and valuables after parking their mobile home in a lay-by for the night. The couple claim that they woke late, feeling woozy and discovered their holiday home had been emptied by thieves. They suspect the thieves pumped sleeping gas through the mobile home's ventilation system.
The FO says that enough of these events have been reported over the years to merit a warning.
Earlier this year, EURSOC picked up on another report of tourists being gassed by thieves, this time in Italy, where Eastern European gangs are reportedly targetting trains. They are said to slip sleeping gas canisters into carriages to subdue passengers before robbing their victims.
As we reported back then, sleeping gas robberies have been part of Mediterranean folklore for decades. On an Inter Rail trip from Paris to Nice in 1990, your correspondent spent a sleepless night on his couchette following a warning from a fellow traveller that thieves in Marseilles pumped gas into carriages; then the criminals were suspected to be French thugs. Now this high-level technology has fallen into the hands of Albanian and Romanian gangsters, despite military attempts to weaponise sleeping gases proving disastrous.
Indeed, the story has spread to the other side of the world, with newspapers in the Philippines reporting on a gang which uses a mysterious spray to immobilise shoppers, who remain conscious while their valuables are stolen.
As we wondered in our previous report, we can't find any information on what sort of gas could be pumped into train carriages, mobile homes or villas in doses powerful enough to cause unconsiousness, never mind in spray form outdoors. This hasn't prevented the development and sale of "narcotic alarm" devices for use by caravaners, particularly in Holland, which has a huge caravaning community.
Indeed, previous uses of "knockout gas" by the military have had serious side effects. When Russian forces pumped gas into a Moscow theatre where terrorists had taken hundreds hostage, 117 hostages died from the effects. 650 more were still being treated for serious side effects, weeks after their release.
Do date, there are no claims of any victims of Mediterranean gas crimes suffering any more than a mild hangover effect, never mind deaths following their gassing.
Do Albanian and Romanian thieves have access to gas that Moscow's security forces don't have? Military authority Janes says that following the Moscow fiasco, secret programmes to develop a non-lethal incapacitating gas would be stepped up. Wikipedia reports that Sleeping Gas is an old standby of pulp detective fiction.
Ether would knock sleeping victims out for the duration of a robbery, but this requires that the criminals break into their victims' bedrooms. In most cases reported, the victims were in locked vehicles, villas or railway carriages.
EURSOC has contacted several travel insurance agencies to request details of their policy for claims of crimes which follow "sleeping gas" attacks, but we have yet to receive a response. We're awaiting replies from the Foreign Office too.
EURSOC is not claiming that victims of robberies in Europe aren't telling the truth, nor are we trying to diminish their experiences. We are merely questioning the media and Foreign Office's readiness to leap onto claims without properly investigating the science behind them.
