French police have arrested five new people, including a prime suspect, over this month’s daring jewellery theft from the Louvre museum, the Paris prosecutor said on Thursday. “We had him in our sights,” Laure Beccuau said of the main suspect, adding that none of the loot has been found.
The new arrests follow the detention over the weekend of two men suspected of breaking into the museum through an upstairs window and stealing the precious pieces. The prosecutor said the pair had “partially admitted“ their involvement in the heist under interrogation.
DNA evidence linked the main suspect to the theft, Beccuau said, suggesting he was among the four-man team that carried out the brazen October 19 heist.
“As for the other individuals who are in police custody, they are people who may be able to provide us with information about the course of events,” she said, adding it was “too early” to give additional details about the suspects. The five detentions took place on Wednesday in and around Paris.
One of those who has been charged is a 34-year-old Algerian national who has been living in France since 2010, Beccuau said. He was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport as he was about to fly to Algeria with no return ticket. He was living in a suburb north of Paris, Aubervilliers, and was known to police mostly for road traffic offenses. His DNA was found on one of the scooters used by robbers to leave the scene, she said.
The other suspect, 39, was arrested at his home in Aubervilliers. The man was known to police for several thefts, and his DNA was found on one of the glass cases where the jewels were displayed and on items the thieves left behind, she added.
Inside job unlikely
Beccuau said nothing suggests that the robbers had any accomplices within the museum’s staff. Watch moreSearch for stolen crown jewels as investigators piece together timeline of Louvre break-in Beccuau has previously said she does not rule out the possibility of the involvement of a larger criminal group, including a person who may have ordered the theft and been the mastermind behind it.
The robbery exposed security lapses at the world’s most-visited museum and was seen by many as a cause for national humiliation. Dozens of detectives have been hunting four thieves who used a truck with a moving lift and cutting gear to break into a first-floor gallery at the museum, fleeing with eight precious pieces of jewellery.
Among them are an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his wife, Empress Marie-Louise, and a diadem that once belonged to the Empress Eugenie, dotted with nearly 2,000 diamonds.
Platform with AFP
