Two men have been arrested following the Louvre Museum heist last Sunday, when £76 million worth of items were stolen in broad daylight. One man had been trying to escape to Algeria when he was arrested at Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport at around 10pm by border police, reports French media.
The second man was arrested shortly after in the Paris region. According to the French paper Le Parisien, the suspects are both from Seine-Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and were both known to police for previous burglaries. Both men have been placed in pre-trial detention as part of investigations, and specialist police will be able to question them for up to 96 hours.
The “highly organised criminals” broke into the Louvre in broad daylight just after 9.30am on October 19, and escaped with €88million (£76million) worth of items, including part of the French crown jewels, just eight minutes later.
Four thieves arrived with a vehicle-mounted mechanical lift, or a cherry picker, to gain access to the Gallery of Apollo. Pictures from the scene show the ladder propped up against a first-floor window.
Two of the thieves got inside by cutting through the window with angle grinders, before threatening the guards, and cutting through the glass of two display cases with priceless jewels.
Among the stolen goods was a necklace that belonged to Napoleon’s wife, Empress Marie-Louise, and a diadem of Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugenie.
French police reported the thieves were already on scooters waiting outside for their escape by 9.38am local time, and they had been inside for just four minutes.
France’s justice minister said the security protocols “failed” and had left France with a “terrible image”.
On Friday, the Louvre transferred some of its most precious jewels to the Bank of France after the heist exposed embarrassing flaws in the museum’s security.
