A nation's stolen history

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The Waiouru haul was huge. Among the 96 medals stolen were nine Victoria Crosses, including Charles Upham's VC and Bar - the only double VC decoration awarded to a combat soldier. Two rare George Crosses, an Albert Medal, a Distinguished Conduct Medal and Military Medal were also taken.

The odds are the stolen medals may never be seen again. It is believed that only one of the 15 Victoria Crosses known to have been stolen worldwide since the mid-1800s have been recovered - and that one, stolen from the Canadian War Memorial Museum in 1973, was missing for 31 years.

Even on a world scale, the Waiouru raid is probably unprecedented - comparable to the theft of major international artworks.

Australian War Memorial Museum curator Nick Fletcher said: "I don't think there's ever been a bigger theft than this before. No larger group of significant medals has been stolen like this."

Going by overseas auctions in recent years, the haul could be worth $10 million, easily making it the biggest robbery in New Zealand criminal history.

The possibility of the thief or thieves realising anywhere near that is unlikely - there is no way they could put them up for auction or display without their being recognised.

However, there is every indication the thief or thieves could have had a buyer already lined up.

Military historian Glyn Harper said the theft bore all the hallmarks of a professional burglary.

"The thieves were only there for a short time and whoever took them knew which medals to take - those most valuable to New Zealand."

Dr Harper says there are markets for stolen medals. "There are people whose life revolves around collecting these things and they do come up for auction.

"These medals, however, will never be sold publicly, as all have the names of the recipients on the back.

"There is still a black market - some people have a lot of money and not all have the ethics which preclude them from buying something stolen."

This is disputed by the British billionaire who owns the largest VC collection in the world and who has offered a $200,000 reward for the recovery of the medals.

Lord Ashcroft - who has more than 140 VCs, or one in 10 of all those awarded since 1856 - says there is no black market for medals as there is for international art.

Though he rates the Upham VC and Bar as the "Holy Grail", he says he knows of no one in Britain or the Commonwealth who would want nine New Zealand VCs on their wall.

How good was security at Waiouru?Wellington security consultant Trevor Morley describes security at the Waiouru Army Museum as poor.

The thief or thieves gained entry through a rear fire escape about 1.10am last Sunday, smashed glass security cabinets, grabbed the medals and got away within four minutes.

A security guard raced to the scene as soon as he was alerted by the alarm, but the thieves were gone.

"Small objects of huge value require security of the highest standard," Mr Morley said.

"But what we had here is that people were very quickly able to get them into their possession, so the basic principles of security - deny access, deter access and delay access - were never put into practice when those displays were built."

Having so many medals in a few cabinets "was like having all your eggs in one basket" - and those cabinets should have been stronger.

Mr Morley wonders whether the museum's security cameras were running at the time and, if they were, whether they had produced any useful images.

Police say they are holding the video for their own good reasons.Should the real medals have been on display? In Britain, many museums display replicas. But Australian War Memorial Museum curator Nick Fletcher supports the Waiouru Army Museum's policy of having the real medals on display.

"Any time you display important medals in the way they should be displayed, so the public can see them, you have to take a degree of risk. The simple act of allowing the public to view them places them at risk.

"A primary tenet is that, when people come to visit the institution, their experience should be a genuine one."

The Australian museum, which has the world's biggest publicly accessible collection of VCs, with 61 medals, clearly has tighter security than Waiouru.

For one thing, Mr Fletcher says its medals are individually cased - an arrangement that would at least slow down thieves if they were able to get into the museum in the first place.

What chance is there that the thieves will

be caught? A lot of this could be down to clues left at the scene and the forensic traces picked up by the police.

Mr Morley says the thief or thieves also have a problem. Worldwide publicity given to their crime is going to make it difficult to sell the medals, and collecting a ransom or reward is also going to be difficult without increasing the risk of being caught.

"I would like to think the thieves are sweating. This was one of the most heinous burglaries that's ever been committed in New Zealand.

"Whatever their motive was, the huge publicity worldwide means their ability to profit is virtually zero.

"A clever offender would pop them in the mail and send them to the commissioner of police and lie low for the rest of their lives."If they turn up overseas, how do we get them back? Despite a Customs alert at airports and ports, Prime Minister Helen Clark says the chances of stopping the medals being smuggled out of the country are almost nil.

Interpol has issued an international alert, distributed to airports around the world, while the Aviation Security Service and New Zealand Post beefed up screening measures.

But Miss Clark said looking for medals in somebody's luggage was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The medals have been registered on the International Culture and Heritage database held by Interpol and, if they show up, New Zealand could request their return. It would be argued that the medals are culturally important items.

This could be assisted by the passage last year of the Protected Objects Act, which ratifies two international conventions relating to trade in cultural objects and stolen property.

One of the conventions is signed by 114 countries and the other by 40.