Two arrests have been made in connection with the Oct. 19 theft of French royal and Napoleonic-era jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from Paris’ Louvre museum, according to NBC and other news sources.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters on Sunday that French police had detained a man who was planning to leave the country from Charles de Gaulle airport. One or more other people have also been arrested, she said.
NBC reported on Monday that “two suspects with a history of jewel thefts had been tracked for days after their DNA was recovered from the museum and were arrested Saturday.”
Beccuau railed against French coverage of the arrests that preceded her announcement and cited anonymous sources. “I deeply deplore the hasty disclosure of this information,” she said, according to newspapers including the Wall Street Journal. “This revelation can only harm the investigative efforts of the hundred or so investigators deployed in the search for both the stolen jewelry and all the criminals.”
The NBC story quoted Axel Ronde, spokesman for the French police union CFTC, as saying the thieves had “left gloves, a walkie-talkie, a vest, and a can of gasoline. And that allowed my colleagues from the forensic team to find these DNA traces.”
Ronde added that police decided to move in on Saturday when it became clear that one suspect was planning to flee to Algeria. Both men arrested are in their 30s and from Aubervilliers, a northeast suburb of Paris, said Ronde. They had prior convictions and “were known to police having previously targeted jewelry stores.”
France’s interior minister Laurent Nuñez has said that over 60 investigators are working on the case. The theft occurred in broad daylight after four thieves—who were wearing yellow vests, to look like construction workers—used a truck with an extendable ladder to access a second-floor balcony of the Louvre and then broke a window to get inside.
They stole eight pieces from the museum’s Apollo gallery (which houses the French crown jewels), including a tiara with some 1,000 diamonds, an emerald necklace, a pair of emerald earrings, a diadem, a sapphire necklace, and a sapphire earring.
The thieves exited out the window and drove away on scooters. As they fled, they apparently dropped some of their equipment as well as a diamond- and emerald-encrusted crown they had taken from the museum.
Top: Earrings and a necklace that were stolen from the Louvre earlier this month (photo: © 2004 GrandPalaisRmn/Musée du Louvre/Jean-Gilles Berizzi)
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