Despite the arrests, the jewelry has not yet been recovered, according to the prosecutor in charge of the case.
ANDRE FONTENELLE
PARIS, FRANCE (FOLHAPRESS) – Five new suspects involved in the theft of jewels from the Louvre Museum were arrested on Wednesday night (29), in Paris and on the outskirts of the French capital.
The announcement of the arrests was made this Thursday morning (30) by the prosecutor in charge of the case, Laure Beccuau, in an interview with RTL radio.
Also read
Despite the arrests, the jewelry has not yet been recovered, according to her.
In total, there are now seven prisoners, which indicates an operation with others involved in addition to the four criminals seen in the robbery committed on the 19th.
On Saturday (25), two men had already been arrested, who, according to the police, were the ones who entered the Apollo Gallery through a window and took the French crown jewels.
Among the five arrested this Wednesday, one was identified thanks to DNA traces left at the crime scene, Beccuau said. This means that he was one of the four participants in the robbery on the 19th.
Hours before the new arrests, Laure Beccuau had released details of the investigation.
“I still hope that the jewels can be found and returned to the Louvre and the nation. Whoever buys them will be guilty of receiving them. There is still time to return them,” said Beccuau. Nine French crown jewels were taken, of which only one was recovered, Empress Eugênia’s crown, abandoned near the scene of the crime.
The two suspects arrested on Saturday live in Aubervilliers, a city on the northern outskirts of Paris, and have been formally charged with robbery and conspiracy to commit a crime, according to the Paris Prosecutor’s Office. They could face up to 15 years in prison for the theft.
One of them, Algerian, 34, has lived in France since 2010. He was arrested at 8pm on Saturday at Charles de Gaulle international airport, with a one-way ticket to Algeria. He worked as a garbage collector and delivery man, but was unemployed. He had convictions for theft and traffic violations. He was caught thanks to DNA collected from one of the scooters used in the escape.
The other, 39, was arrested near his own residence. He worked as a clandestine taxi driver and delivery man. He has two convictions for robbery, in 2008 and 2014. In one of them, he robbed an ATM using a car to break into the equipment. He left traces of DNA on one of the windows and on objects abandoned during his escape, which allowed him to be identified.
According to the prosecutor, there is no evidence of complicity within the museum.
A “detailed and monumental” work of analyzing security cameras at the Louvre and the city was carried out by investigators. This made it possible to reconstruct the route before the robbery — the four arranged a meeting point and took the truck with the platform used to break into the museum and the two scooters. They left the museum towards the east of Paris and abandoned the scooters, exchanging them for another vehicle.
