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French authorities have detained two of the suspected robbers believed to have stolen precious crown jewels from the Louvre in a museum heist that stunned the world, officials said on Sunday. Two men in their 30s and originally from the capital’s Seine-Saint-Denis suburb – which includes some of the country’s most impoverished areas – were detained on Saturday evening. They were known to French police and one of the suspects was about to fly to Algeria from Charles de Gaulle airport. There was no indication on Sunday that any of France’s stolen crown jewels had been recovered. A swarm of investigators had been mobilised to track down the thieves who robbed the world-renowned museum in broad daylight on October 19, making off with jewellery worth an estimated US$102 million in just a few minutes. Furious Prosecutor Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said they had “carried out arrests on Saturday evening”. “One of the men arrested was about to leave the country” from Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, Beccuau said. The two men were taken into police custody on suspicion of organised theft and criminal conspiracy. They could be held up to 96 hours. Beccuau deplored the public revelation of the arrests, first revealed in media reports, warning they “can only hinder the efforts of the 100 investigators mobilised” in the hunt for the jewels and the perpetrators. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez also called for confidentiality while congratulating the investigators “who have worked tirelessly,” in a social media post. In the heist last Sunday, the robbers clambered up an extendable ladder from a stolen movers’ truck and, using cutting equipment, broke into a first-floor gallery that houses royal gems. They dropped a diamond- and emerald-studded crown as they fled down the ladder and onto scooters, but managed to steal eight other pieces, including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon Bonaparte gave his wife, Empress Marie-Louise. ‘Concern for the jewellery’ The brazen theft has made headlines across the world and sparked a debate in France about the security of cultural institutions. The Louvre’s director has admitted the robbers had taken advantage of a blind spot in the security surveillance of the museum’s outside walls. But Beccuau said public and private security cameras elsewhere had allowed detectives to track the thieves “in Paris and in surrounding regions.” Investigators were also able to find DNA samples and fingerprints at the scene from items left behind by the robbers as they fled, including gloves, a high-vis vest, a blowtorch and power tools. They also dropped a crown that once belonged to Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, which was damaged and needs to be restored. The rest of the pieces have not been recovered and are at risk of being broken apart and their precious metal settings melted down. Nunez expressed his “concern for the jewellery” in an interview with French weekly La Tribune Dimanche on Sunday, saying the heist appeared to have been carried out by an organised crime group but adding that “thieves are always eventually caught”. “The loot is unfortunately often stashed abroad. I hope that’s not the case – I remain confident,” he added. The Louvre theft is the latest in a string of robberies targeting French museums. Less than 24 hours after the Louvre break-in, a museum in eastern France reported the theft of gold and silver coins after finding a smashed display case. Last month, criminals broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold nuggets worth more than US$1.5 million. A Chinese woman has been detained and charged with involvement in the theft. Culture Minister Rachida Dati said on Friday she had requested findings from an investigation into the Louvre’s security by early next week to “announce concrete measures to secure” the museum.
