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Two suspects have been arrested in relation to last Sunday’s heist at the Louvre museum in Paris, in which a gang of four men made off with crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m), French media have reported.
The Paris public prosecutor confirmed on Sunday that one man had been detained by organised crime squad officers at about 10pm (8pm UK time) on Saturday at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, but did not say how many arrests had been made.
The prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said in a statement she regretted the premature leak of the information, saying it could hinder the work of more than 100 investigators “mobilised to recover the stolen jewels and apprehend all of the perpetrators”.
She said it was too early to give further details but she would make a further statement once the suspects’ pre-charge detention period was over. Under French law, people suspected of committing serious crimes can be detained for up to 96 hours before they are charged.
Multiple French media outlets said the man detained at the airport had been about to board a plane to Algeria, while the other was detained later on Saturday in the greater Paris region. Both were reportedly in their 30s and known to police, and were taken into custody on suspicion of “organised theft and criminal conspiracy”.
Citing police sources, France Inter radio said the pair were from the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis and had been identified from forensic analysis of objects left at the scene, which included a helmet, angle grinders, a hi-vis vest and other items.
The French interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, sent his “warmest congratulations” to the investigators but also called for judicial secrecy laws to be respected so the detectives could continue their work.
Beccuau said on Friday that more than 150 DNA samples, fingerprints and other traces were being analysed in Paris and nearby forensic laboratories and that she was “optimistic” about the investigation’s outcome.
The four men pulled up outside the world’s most visited museum at about 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 ornate first-floor Apollo gallery.
Wearing hi-vis vests to resemble maintenance workers, they smashed an unsecured window and used disc cutters to open two display cases before descending in the bucket lift and fleeing on motorbikes driven by the other two gang members.
The operation lasted fewer than seven minutes, with the two who entered the gallery spending three minutes and 58 seconds inside. They dropped a diamond- and emerald-studded crown during their getaway, but fled with eight richly gem-encrusted pieces.
Those included an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Marie Louise, and a diadem set with 212 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds that had once belonged to the empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.
