The robber had not calculated that there was no way to escape from the icy island
The northernmost bank in the world, in the Svalbard archipelago, in the Arctic Ocean, was today targeted by a robber who was arrested very quickly, since he probably had not calculated that there was no way to escape from the sparsely populated, icy island, nor had he been somewhere.
It is the first time in history that an armed robbery has been committed in this archipelago, at the North Pole - a robbery that was obviously doomed from the start to fail.
"We had an armed robbery around 10.40 in the morning. A gunman snatched a sum of money. "He was arrested very quickly," said a spokesman for the local governor in the central city of Longyearbyen, the capital of Spitsberger Island.
Authorities did not disclose the perpetrator's details or the amount he managed to get from the bank. The money was found on him, as broadcast by the French Agency and relayed by the Athenian News Agency.
The police then clarified that it was a foreigner who was visiting the archipelago. He has been transferred to Tromso, mainland Norway, for questioning and trial.
The chances of success of the aspiring "Butch Cassidy of the Arctic" were virtually zero: in Longyearbyen, with a population of 2.000, everyone knows each other and the airport is the only "exit gate" they have. A total of 3.000 people and as many polar bears live in the archipelago. At this time of year, the sun never rises on the islands and the temperature drops to -20 degrees Celsius.
The robber's catastrophic failure provoked a lot of ironic comments on social networking sites: "The most reckless robbery in Norwegian history," one Twitter user wrote, while another commented that he "probably forgot how to plan his escape."