After media reports of the detentions, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said authorities had \u201ccarried out arrests on Saturday evening\u201d, and confirmed that \u201cone of the men arrested was about to leave the country\u201d from Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport.<\/p>\n
The second man was detained not long afterwards in the Paris region, media reports said.<\/p>\n
Beccuau deplored the public revelation of the arrests, warning they \u201ccan only hinder the efforts of the 100 investigators mobilised\u201d in the hunt for the jewels and the perpetrators.<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez also called for confidentiality while congratulating the investigators \u201cwho have worked tirelessly\u201d, in a post on X.<\/p>\n
In the October 19 heist, the robbers went up an extendable ladder of a stolen movers\u2019 truck and, using cutting equipment, broke into a gallery that houses royal gems.<\/p>\n
They dropped a diamond- and emerald-studded crown as they fled down the ladder and on to scooters, but managed to steal eight other pieces, including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon Bonaparte gave his wife, the Empress Marie-Louise.<\/p>\n
\u2018Concern for the jewellery\u2019<\/p>\n
The brazen theft made headlines across the world and sparked a debate in France about the security of cultural institutions.<\/p>\n
The Louvre\u2019s director has admitted the robbers had exploited a blind spot in the security surveillance of the museum\u2019s outside walls.<\/p>\n
But Beccuau said public and private security cameras elsewhere had allowed detectives to track the thieves \u201cin Paris and in surrounding regions\u201d.<\/p>\n
Investigators were also able to find DNA samples and fingerprints at the scene from items left behind by the robbers as they fled, including gloves, a high-vis vest, a blowtorch and power tools.<\/p>\n
The robbers also dropped a crown that once belonged to Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, which was damaged and needs to be restored.<\/p>\n
The rest of the pieces have not been recovered and risk being broken apart, their precious metal settings melted down.<\/p>\n
Nunez expressed his \u201cconcern\u201d for the jewellery in an interview with French weekly La Tribune Dimanche on Sunday. He said the heist appeared to have been carried out by an organised crime group but added that \u201cthieves are always eventually caught\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe loot is unfortunately often stashed abroad. I hope that\u2019s not the case \u2013 I remain confident,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The Louvre theft is the latest in a string of robberies targeting French museums.<\/p>\n
Less than 24 hours after the Louvre break-in, a museum in eastern France reported the theft of gold and silver coins after finding a smashed display case.<\/p>\n
Last month, criminals broke into Paris\u2019 Natural History Museum, making off with gold nuggets worth more than US$1.5 million ($2.6m). A Chinese woman has been detained and charged with involvement in the theft.<\/p>\n
Culture Minister Rachida Dati said on X on Friday she had requested findings from an investigation into the Louvre\u2019s security to \u201cannounce concrete measures to secure\u201d the museum.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, head of the National Assembly\u2019s cultural affairs committee, Alexandre Portier, proposed an amendment to the budget currently being debated to create \u201can emergency fund to secure national heritage\u201d of \u20ac50m ($100.9m).<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After media reports of the detentions, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said authorities had \u201ccarried out arrests on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,29893,8843,10808,74755,38711,11775,71,305,42,29260,74754,66961,7912,3605,3586,43,10711,6943,675,29263,74756,27517,3048,4736,20247,8841,1361,14168,40,38,41,39,1237,377],"class_list":["post-102374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-authorities","tag-believed","tag-crown","tag-detain","tag-detained","tag-french","tag-from","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-heist","tag-jewel","tag-jewels","tag-louvre","tag-men","tag-museum","tag-news","tag-officials","tag-paris","tag-police","tag-precious","tag-robbers","tag-robbery","tag-said","tag-stolen","tag-stunned","tag-suspected","tag-that","tag-theft","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-two","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}