How Polish killers, drug smugglers and rapists on the run in Britain are being sent home on 'Con Air' flights

The Eastern European criminals and fugitives, captured on the run, are loaded on to specially hired military aircraft to face court and prison intheir homeland.

In scenes reminiscent of the Hollywood movie Con Air starring Nicolas Cage – about a group of hardened convicts being flown across America – the Polish criminals are forced to endure an uncomfortable, windowless ride home in the back of a Russian-built Antonov troop-carrier.

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After it was recently revealed that the Home Office was offering £3,000 incentives to foreign prisoners willing to return home to relieve overcrowding in Britain's jails, this is justice Polish-style.

The Polish authorities used to escort their prisoners home on regular charter flights from London.

But violent incidents which endangered some civilian flights – as well as the escalating cost – led to the chartering of military planes to fly them back to Warsaw.

So many Poles wanted for crimes - including murder and rape - are being picked up in Britain that "Con Air" flights from Warsaw are now regularly touching down in London.

The camouflaged plane is stripped of everything other than a metal bench and the prisoners are handcuffed and guarded by armed policemen.

When the aircraft land, the prisoners are led off the rear loading ramp in shackles, carrying their possessions in plastic bags, and herded off past a row of uniformed officers into prison buses that take them to the cells.

The Polish ministry of internal affairs says the number of criminals extradited from the UK to Poland has recently grown 14-fold – with an average of three wanted Poles arrested in Britain each week.

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Since Poland's accession to the EU in 2004, scores of people facing court hearings are known to have fled to the UK.

It has become a popular choice for wanted individuals who find it easy to disappear among Britain's expanding Polish community, most of whom are hard-working and law-abiding.

Before the flights started this year, each fugitive had to be escorted back home by two police officers.

In 2007, it cost about £300,000 to take 135 criminals back to Poland on 73 different commercial flights.

Now, by using leased, no-frills military planes from the Polish air force, the Polish police have slashed the cost of the operation.

Earlier this month, a secret flight from London to Warsaw took off carrying ten Poles wanted for offences as diverse as bank theft, drug smuggling and arms trading.

The cost was £8,000, compared with the £38,000 Polish authorities would have paid for regular flights.

Already this year, 36 suspected criminals have been sent back to Poland in this way.

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Sources in Warsaw said: "It's cheap and it's safer.

"We've had a few accidents, when criminals flying back to Poland tried to hijack the plane, despite the efforts of their escorts, and forced the crew to divert.

"The slightest possibility of that is ruled out now."

The fugitives are arrested here under European warrants for a range of crimes committed in Poland, from murder and rape to petty theft.

Most are held after committing crimes in the UK or after being stopped for traffic offences.

A spokesman at the Polish police headquarters in Warsaw said: "Most of them have committed crimes in Britain. These include practically every crime in the book."

In the past month, one of the flights has been used to deport a man who fled from Poland to England after killing two people in a road accident.

Other Poles who have recently been flown home were wanted for a security van robbery, assault and illegal possession of weapons.

A spokesman for the Polish interior ministry said: "There is no other way. So many are being caught each week for petty – and some serious – crimes in the UK.

"They don't like the military flights because they aren't exactly comfortable. But they do the job."