Police have detained a serving member of the Joint Services and a businessman following a robbery at the Matthew’s Ridge airstrip in the North West District on Monday.

Reports are that the men were held on Tuesday morning at Arakaka, another mining area in the Matakai Sub-region.

On Monday around 1330hrs , four heavily armed , masked men pounced on three men at the airstrip at Matthew’s Ridge. The men were relieved of a large quantity of gold among other items.

Acting on intelligence gathered ranks in the area intercepted a vehicle about 09:20h today at Arakaka with two of the robbery suspects. The police conducted a search and found several containers of fuel and a quantity of raw gold, suspected to be part of yesterday’s heist.

The businessman , who is said to be the mastermind, during interrogation, took investigators to a location and handed over two 9mm handguns with magazines , an AK47 Aassault Rifle with a magazine, a quantity of ammunition , a Global Positioning System (GPS) device and a camouflage jacket.

Further intelligence led to the arrest of the serving member of the Joint Services has been detained.