(8/18/99)
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Six armed robbers sang hymns and invited their victims to a party before making off with over $120,000 in a three-hour heist at a bank in the Kenyan capital.
The six disguised themselves as doormen and ushered unsuspecting bank employees into the Dubai-based MashreqBank on Nairobi's main street Tuesday before robbing them of money, jewelry, underwear and watches.
Bank manager Njage Makanga arrived for work and unsuspectingly greeted the disguised robbers before they held a revolver to his head and politely asked him to walk over to his colleagues who had been made to form a human pyramid, and get the keys for the safe.
"They were very polite," Makanga told Reuters. "They said 'We have come to do a normal day's work just like you, so let us both conduct business as normal and cooperate with each other'."
None of the hostages were harmed but one robber, who posed as a cleaner, poured a bucket of dirty water over the head of a female bank clerk after he discovered she was wearing no jewelry.
Makanga said one of the robbers became jittery as the number of hostages grew to over 20 and began to sing hymns to calm himself down.
"I heard him say that if something went wrong he would only be able to kill 10 people at the most, and so he started to sing religious songs," he said. "He was a very religious man."
When bank staff complained that their wedding rings were being stolen, the robbers apologized and promised to post all items of sentimental value back to their victims.
They made off with 9 million shillings ($120,000) of bank money as well as the valuables taken from their hostages.
As they left, they invited some of the hostages to join them for a party at a city bar Friday to celebrate their new-found wealth. "All the cute ones, please come to our party," said one robber, according to Makanga.
"It was more Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid than a proper robbery, but we were still scared," one bank employee said.