DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) – Two Northern Ireland bank employees were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of involvement in the robbery of their Belfast bank, raising questions about whether the British-record theft could have been an inside job.

Chris Ward, 24, and a 22-year-old woman whom police refused to identify were being held at the Northern Ireland police’s central interrogation center in Antrim, west of Belfast, where under anti-terrorist laws they could be held for up to a week before being charged or released.

A detective familiar with the investigation into the $50 million robbery Dec. 20 confirmed that Ward was under arrest, as well as a female friend who also works for Northern Bank.

The detective spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because it is against police policy to discuss the identities of suspects before they are charged.

Four police armored vehicles were parked outside Ward’s home in Poleglass on the outskirts of Catholic west Belfast, a power base of the outlawed Irish Republican Army. Forensic specialists in protective clothing searched both the house and a car outside.

Northern Ireland police commanders, the British and Irish governments, and international experts all have accused the IRA of robbing the central vault of the Northern Bank. The IRA has denied involvement.

Masked, armed gangs took hostage the families of two key Northern Bank employees, including Ward, and threatened to kill those hostages unless both men cooperated and raised no alarms.

Ward gave an interview to the British Broadcasting Corp. in Belfast days after the robbery.

In that interview, Ward stressed he had played no role in the raid and was an innocent victim. He said a man who was covering his face with a hat and coat collar arrived at his family’s Poleglass home on the night of Dec. 19, then pulled a gun, donned a balaclava-style mask, and brought in more henchmen, who held Ward’s family captive for the following 24 hours until the robbery was over.

Ward said the gang leader warned him that if he disobeyed instructions, “You and your family are dead.”

Ward said he was taken to the rural home of his work colleague, Kevin McMullan, where a second gang was holding McMullan and his wife. Ward said he and McMullan both were ordered to go to work normally, stay past closing time, then ferry boxes of cash to a waiting van.

“You had to act as if nothing was wrong,” Ward told the BBC. “It was very difficult to do, but you knew in the back of your head that you had to do it, that you couldn’t tell anybody.”

Three people have been charged and ordered held without bail in connection with the robbery investigation. None has been accused of actually carrying out the raid.

Chief Constable Hugh Orde, commander of Northern Ireland’s police, says his detectives have accounted for about $9.5 million of the stolen cash.

Police in the neighboring Irish Republic seized about three-fifths of that total during raids in February on the homes and offices of people suspected of involvement in IRA money-laundering.

The remaining two-fifths, police estimate, was burned before it could be seized during those raids.

Orde says the bulk of the missing money has been rendered worthless because the Northern Bank – which is allowed to print and distribute its own designs of British currency – withdrew its previous designs from circulation and issued new notes.

AP-ES-11-29-05 1417EST