Associated Press
LONDON — A former antiques dealer was sent to jail for 10 months on Friday for handling a stolen Nazi code machine that Britain captured and used against Germany during World War II.
Dennis Yates, 58, was sentenced at Aylesbury Crown Court after pleading guilty last month to charges of handling the stolen Enigma G312. He was not charged with stealing the machine.
The Enigma, valued at $144,000, disappeared in April from a glass display cabinet at the former code-breakers’ base in Bletchley Park, 50 miles northwest of London.
Hundreds of visitors had been attending an open house there when a volunteer noticed the machine was missing and contacted police.
Following months of ransom demands, the machine was sent to a British TV journalist and then returned to Bletchley Park.
Yates previously claimed that all he did was "broker the return" of the rare machine. He claimed he was acting as a go-between for an Indian client he had never met.
Initially, Yates also faced charges of blackmailing the director of Bletchley Park over the return of the machine. The court ordered that charge to remain on file, which means it will not be acted upon now but could be pursued at a later date.
The typewriterlike Enigmas were used by the Nazis to encode top-secret messages. The Royal Navy captured several machines, and British intelligence agents cracked the code, which historians credit for shortening the war by as much as two years.
Deciphered messages provided crucial information during the Battle of the Atlantic, the desert campaign against German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the preparations for D-Day.
The only other Enigma G312 machine on public display is at the U.S. National Security Agency’s National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Md.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
