Masons linked to bullion heist

Kenneth Noye, the Brinks-Mat bullion handler wanted in connection with the M25 road rage murder, was a mason in the Hammersmith Lodge, a Commons select committee investigating links between the freemasons and police was told last night.

The claim that Noye and the Brinks-Mat bullion gang were freemasons will raise questions about the ease with which Noye evaded detection in spite of a national alert after the killing on a slip road of the M25. He is believed to be in Northern Cyprus.

Noye, who was jailed for 14 years for receiving part of the pounds 26m worth of gold stolen in the 1983 Brinks-Mat robbery, is believed to have shipped out to Cyprus in a Range Rover similar to the one the killer was allegedly driving.

The disclosure surprised the chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, Sir Ivan Lawrence, who successfully defended one of the Brinks- Mat accused.

The claim that Noye was a mason was made by Martin Short, author of Inside the Brotherhood, an expose of the freemasons, as part of the committee's investigation into masons in the police and the judiciary.

Mr Short said he had received reports that Thomas Hamilton, the Dunblane gunman, was able to procure handgun licences because he was a freemason. Police and criminals were bound together by the brotherhood of freemasonry, he said. They included pornographers and the "porn squad" in the 1960s, which was reformed because of bribery and corruption. Mr Short said: "Grand Lodge may claim that the Scotland Yard corruption of the 1960s and 1970s was a long time ago. But proof of freemasonry's negative role among Britain's police has continued to emerge."

The members of the select committee all declared they were not masons. But Mr Short said there were two known lodges in the House of Commons, including "New Welcome", created in 1929 by the Duke of Windsor to recruit Labour MPs.