Hatton Garden raiders say they worked under instruction from mysterious 'Basil'

'Blame Basil' tactic adopted at start of three-day hearing to decide fate of six men convicted for their roles in the heist

John Collins, Terry Perkins and Brian Reader in a London pub from video surveillance (PA)

Raiders facing long jail terms for the Hatton Garden jewellery heist were operating under instruction from the mysterious “Basil”, who remains missing along with £10m of proceeds of the crime, a court heard on Monday.

Basil – whom one of the burglars claimed was a former policeman – was described as the brains of the £14m raid and taught other gang members how to get into the safety deposit centre in London’s jewellery district, according to one defence barrister.

The “Blame Basil” tactic was adopted at the start of a three-day hearing which will decide the fate of six men convicted for their roles in last April’s raid, one of Britain’s biggest burglaries.

Prosecutors were pushing for the key players to be sentenced to at least ten years imprisonment for the raid, which saw the team drill a hole through the vault wall and ransack 73 security boxes. Basil, who remains on the run, has a £20,000 reward on his head.

Peter Rowlands, barrister for Terry Perkins, said: “Basil had keys to the building. He was able to educate the others as to the workings of Hatton Garden; where the alarms were, what the difficulties were, how best to go about it and so on. So the men in the dock were the team on the ground, not the brains.”

The men – including three in their 60s and one in his 70s – were described as a 1980s team caught out by 21st century law enforcement. Mr Rowlands highlighted their failure to throw away their mobile phones.

Brian Reader, 77, the oldest of four named ringleaders, did not appear in court and his legal team claimed that he may only have a few months left to live after suffering a stroke in prison and was undergoing tests for cancer.

Reader, known as the “guv’nor” by his fellow burglars, fell over inside Belmarsh top security jail and was left for two days without proper care, Woolwich Crown Court was told.

He was only returned to the prison’s medical wing on Friday after being treated in a critical care unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, where he was guarded by nine officers, six of them armed, according to his defence team.

The judge will decide tomorrow when Reader will be sentenced. The others will be sentenced on the same day. They include ringleaders John Collins, 75, of Islington, north London; Danny Jones, 61, and Perkins, 67, both of Enfield, north London. They, along with Reader, 77, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary in September.