It was 12.30pm on a Thursday afternoon and the Royal Dragon restaurant in the heart of London's Chinatown was gearing up for a good day of business. Twenty tables were already full - some occupied by groups of regulars and the business lunch crowd, but there were also lots of tourists who had taken their pick from the strip of Chinese restaurants on Gerrard Street.
At first, the sight of policemen emerging from vehicles outside the restaurant drew little attention from diners, and restaurant owner Robert Lee assumed the police presence was simply part of a security check ahead of a planned visit to the eatery by Prince Charles that week.
But within seconds, 25 heavily armoured men were swarming into the restaurant, one of the better known of the 130 or so in the British capital's Chinese quarter. Amid the chaos, Mr Lee realised that something more sinister was unfolding.
'It was like a terror operation,' Mr Lee said of the incident two months ago. 'There were many people who only spoke Chinese in the restaurant and no interpreters. The police were very aggressive - shouting at everyone. Everyone was running for their safety.'
A similar scene was unfolding simultaneously in four other Chinatown premises, marking the biggest hunt for illegal immigrants in Chinatown's 40-year history.
The operation involved 58 border and immigration officers and 50 Metropolitan policemen. Forty-nine Asians were initially detained in the operation, including 36 mainland Chinese and one Hong Kong national. Four were released on the same day after they were found to be working legally, and 10 Malaysians have since been deported from Britain. The rest are in detention and are expected to be deported once their cases are reviewed.
