Provisional prison for two suspects in the Louvre jewelry robbery after “partially acknowledging” the facts

An investigating judge has charged the two arrested by French Police for allegedly participating in jewelry theft from the Louvre Museum on October 19 and has ordered his provisional arrest, as announced this Wednesday by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office.

In a statement, the Prosecutor’s Office details that both were formally accused of “robbery in organized gang and criminal association in view of committing a crime”, charges that can lead to up to 15 and 10 years in prisonrespectively.

The two suspects, who were in police custody since last weekend, are two men, one of 34 years of Algerian nationality and settled in France since 2010 – arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport just as he was trying to board to his country of origin -, and another Frenchman of 39 years of age and originally from Aubervilliers, on the outskirts of Paris.

Pretending to be workers, both are accused of entering the museum’s Apollo Gallery, thanks to a crane that lifted them to a balcony, from where they entered the gallery from which they took French Crown jewels valued at 88 million eurosalthough its heritage value is incalculable. The whereabouts of the stolen treasures have not yet been found.

During their police custody since last Sunday at the central premises of the Judicial Police (PJ) in Paris, the two suspects “they partially recognized the facts”The Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said this Wednesday at a press conference. The prosecutor did not want to give more details about the confession of the two arrested, “so as not to interfere in the investigation.”

“I remain hopeful that we will find them and return them to the Louvre and to the nation. These jewels are unsaleable, whoever bought them would be considered guilty of complicity with the crime. You still have time to return them,” he assured.

Beccuau explained that the DNA traces of the two men found, detected in one of the motorcycles that the group used in the escape; and in the other, in one of the two display cases that were broken to steal the jewels, as well as some of the objects abandoned by the thieves in their escape.

Both suspects had criminal records, one of them for traffic offenses and the other for aggravated robbery, specifically for trying to steal an ATM by crashing a vehicle.

Does not rule out robbery by order

The prosecutor has assured that at the moment there is nothing to indicate that the thieves had accomplices inside the museum, but she does not rule out that there are other people responsible nor that the theft was commissioned and that there is a possible recipient of the jewelry.

The prosecutor has indicated that 189 pieces of evidence “of various nature” have been found, both at the crime scene and in other searches carried out, while images from the city’s video surveillance cameras have also been analyzed.

With all this, investigators have reconstructed the facts, which confirm that the thieves arrived early in the morning with a crane that they had stolen on October 10 and parked next to the museum.

Two of them, dressed in yellow vests to pretend to be workers, went up to the balcony and entered the gallery at 9:34 a.m.

Four minutes later, they went down the same crane and fled hastily, due to the arrival of the Police and members of the museum’s security, which prevented them from carrying out their plan to set the crane on fire, an element that has allowed investigators to find several clues inside.

They got on two motorcycles where their accomplices were waiting for them and headed to a place in the city where they had other vehicles parked, in which they headed east of the capital.

The robbery on October 19 at the Louvre, considered the robbery of the “century” by the French media, created a shower of criticism towards the management of the museum and the Ministry of Culture, which they blame for not having sufficiently protected one of the most emblematic institutions in the world.

Both the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, and the president of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, have been forced to give explanations to French parliamentarians to appease the national and international consternation caused by the event.