Two suspects have been arrested in relation to last Sunday’s heist of at the Louvre museum in Paris, in which a gang of four men made off with crown jewels worth an estimated €88 million, French media has reported.
One of the two suspects was about to leave the country and was taken into custody at Charles de Gaulle airport at about 10pm on Saturday, Le Parisien newspaper said. The other was arrested later in the evening in the Seine-St-Denis suburb north of Paris.
Paris police were not immediately available for comment.
Thieves stole eight precious pieces from the Louvre’s collection on October 19th, exposing security lapses at the world’s most-visited museum. The gang pulled up outside the museum at 9.30am last Sunday in a stolen furniture removal truck fitted with an extending ladder and lift, in which two of them mounted to the first-floor Apollo gallery.
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Wearing hi-vis vests to resemble construction workers, they smashed an unsecured window and then used disc cutters to open two display cases in the ornate gallery before descending in the bucket lift and making their escape on the back of motorbikes driven by the other two members of the gang
News of the robbery reverberated around the world, prompting soul-searching in France over what some regarded as a national humiliation.
According to Le Parisien, the two arrested men are in their 30s and originally from the Seine-Saint-Denis area. They were known to French police, and one of the suspects was about to depart for Algeria, the newspaper said. - Guardian and Reuters
