Jenson Button’s wife has called for a crackdown on illegal migrants in the UK after the Algerian criminal who stole her suitcase with £250,000 of jewellery was released early from prison.
Brittny Ward said she was hopeful prolific thief Mourad Aid had already been deported and would not be able to sneak his way back into Britain.
The model said politicians needed to get ‘tougher’ on people entering the country without permission and follow the lead of other nations where the laws were stricter.
It comes after Ms Ward said the couple had ‘no interest’ in returning to the UK in the aftermath of the theft because of how ‘unsafe’ Britain felt after the ‘traumatising’ ordeal.
Serial crook Aid swiped Ms Ward’s Goyard carry-on case as the couple’s backs were turned outside St Pancras Station in London.
Ms Ward and F1 star Button were preparing to head off on a Valentine’s Day trip to Paris when the Algerian struck on February 13, 2025.
Alongside bracelets and rings of hugely sentimental value, the case contained two Kelly bags worth around £70,000. None of the items have been recovered.
Aid’s release comes after police launched a major crackdown on luggage thieves after organised gangs unleashed a wave of crime around King’s Cross and St Pancras railway stations.
Jenson Button and his wife Brittny pictured in Dubai in 2016 at the Abu Dhabi Formula One 1 Grand Prix
Mourad Aid was jailed after stealing a suitcase containing £250,000 of goods from Jenson Button’s wife Brittny
A police-issued mugshot of Mourad Aid, who now faces deportation after being released from behind bars
Aid was sentenced to two years and four months behind bars the following May, after pleading guilty to theft, handling stolen goods and stealing a silver Rimowa cabin suitcase belonging to James Humphrey Evans on November 24, 2024.
The Algerian was told he would be automatically deported after his release. A Home Office spokesman said foreign convicts would be ‘barred from ever returning’.
The Daily Mail understands Aid has now been released after serving one year and five months in jail. He was also remanded five days after the incident on February 19, 2025.
Ms Ward told the Daily Mail: ‘Hopefully, he has been deported and he will not make his way back. If you come to a country and commit crimes that is what should happen.
‘You would hope they would serve the whole sentence,’ she added. ‘But I’m a Christian and I believe in forgiveness and change, and I hope that he does not continue to steal people’s belongings.’
While Ms Ward says she still ‘very much [has] a love for the UK’ and insisted it was still doing ‘a better job than America’ she has also called for ‘tougher’ regulations on immigration.
‘A lot of times in America they get released after a few months so hopefully that amount of time has made him reflect on his life,’ she said.
‘There needs to be a legal process to go live in a country and I think that our politicians need to wake up and see what’s happening in other countries.’
It comes amid a police crackdown on organised gangs targeting wealthy passengers outside of King’s Cross and St Pancras railway stations.
Among the most recent victims includes members of Abu Dhabi’s royal family, who had £600,000 worth of jewellery stolen by a gang of illegal Algerian migrants.
Aid ‘flouted’ his bail conditions barring him from the same location, when he stole from the F1 driver’s wife in February 2025.
And just four days later, he was arrested by plainclothes officers in Hatton Garden where he told a ‘succession of lies’, initially claiming to have been in Algeria for a funeral.
He later confessed to taking the lavish Goyard bag only to later claim he had ‘given the suitcase to charity’ in a bid to ‘deflect responsibility onto anyone else but’ himself.
However, Brittny was not his only victim with the career criminal also pleading guilty to the handling of stolen goods on November 24, 2024, prior to the Button theft.
The career criminal, who ‘had been keeping an eye out for travellers coming off the Eurostar’, spotted Mr Evans and his wife, who had arrived from Paris at King’s Cross station and decided to strike.
Aid, alongside another man, made a ‘coordinated effort’ to make off with the Rimowa case after the couple packed into an Uber at around 9.20pm, as one distracted the driver while the other made off with the bag.
Mr Evans managed to track his case to Euston Square and then to an apartment block in west London, using his iPhone, and with the help of a concierge, CCTV of Aid, which was handed over to police.
Then in a flat, items presumed stolen were found, including two laptops, one belonging to Mr Evans, wrapped in foil – a measure that ‘stopped items from being tracked and/or wiped’.
More mobile phones were found in the fridge, wrapped in foil, with ten suitcases and 30 pairs of sunglasses also discovered at the flat. Another man living in there was also arrested.
The amount stolen from Mr Evans was of an unknown value, but the contents of his suitcase included £500 cufflinks.
Aid was described as ‘closely connected’ to the hub of stolen goods, but as a ‘cog in the machine’ and was not in control of the scheme.
The interior designer previously revealed the ‘traumatising’ ordeal, has left her view of the UK and London marred
Brittny’s stolen bags which were later listed online following the incident. These listings were later deleted
CCTV footage captured Mourad Aid (pictured strolling with Brittny’s suitcase). He was later detained by plain clothes officers
Ms Abbey Robertson, mitigating, said the thief had fallen ‘into bad company and made decisions out of character for him as someone with previously good character’.
Ms Robertson also said he was ‘someone who was easily led’, was in a desperate situation regarding his immigration status, and spoke little English.
The defence also argued Aid had ‘expressed remorse for the offences’, adding he came from a ‘difficult background’ in Algeria, where he left due to concerns for his life, which he maintains are still live.
It was also heard his brother has been murdered in his home country and Aid had been struggling to come to terms with his grief.
However, Aid’s ‘brazen and opportunistic’ actions had robbed Ms Ward of any zeal to spend time in Britain.
‘When we first started dating we would go to London, and it was such like a nice place to be, and now it just feels very kind of dark and scary,’ Ms Ward previously said
‘My husband and I really have no interest in going back to the UK, and it’s a shame, because, you know, we will have to go back for family and work.
‘It just feels so unsafe and doesn’t feel how it once was, and it’s just unfortunate because that’s where my children’s grandmother and aunts live.’
Her stolen items were listed online just days after the incident, which served as another blow following the California wildfires that threatened their home alongside countless others in early 2025.
Of the heartbreaking moment she spotted her stolen items online, she said: ‘Unfortunately, I saw the shady-looking photos of these guys holding my bags on their lap.
‘I knew I was probably never getting them back, and who knows how many hands it had touched.
Button, who is believed to be worth around £123million, met Brittny in 2016 after being introduced by friends in Los Angeles. Prior to his relationship with his current wife, the F1 star was married to Jessica Michibata.
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘Any foreign national who receives a prison sentence in the UK is referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity and will be barred from ever returning.
‘Returns are at their highest level in nearly a decade. Nearly 12,000 foreign criminals, including murderers and rapists, have been returned or deported in the two years since the last election – a 41% increase on the two years prior.’
