The suspects face charges for theft committed by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy, prosecutor says.
Two men arrested over a jewel heist at France’s Louvre Museum are to be charged with theft and criminal conspiracy after “partially admitting to the charges”, Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau has said.
The suspects were to be brought before magistrates with a view to “charging them with organised theft, which carries a 15-year prison sentence”, and criminal conspiracy, punishable by 10 years, Beccuau told a press conference on Wednesday. The jewellery stolen on October 19 has “not yet been recovered”, Beccuau said.
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Two suspects in the Louvre jewel heist have “partially” admitted their participation and are believed to be the men who forced their way into the world’s most visited museum, a Paris prosecutor said.
Beccuau said that the two suspects face preliminary charges of theft committed by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy, and are expected to be held in provisional detention. She did not give details about their comments.
It took thieves less than eight minutes to steal the jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102m), shocking the world. The thieves forced open a window, cut into cases with power tools, and fled with eight pieces of the French crown jewels.
One suspect is a 34-year-old Algerian national who has been living in France since 2010, Beccuau said. He was arrested Saturday night at Charles de Gaulle Airport as he was about to fly to Algeria with no return ticket. He was living in Paris’s northern suburb of Aubervilliers and was known to police mostly for road traffic offences, Beccuau said.
The other suspect, 39, was arrested Saturday night at his home, also in Aubervilliers.
“There is no evidence to suggest that he was about to leave the country,” Beccuau said. The man was known to police for several thefts, and his DNA was found on one of the glass cases where the jewels were displayed and on items the thieves left behind, she added.
Prosecutors had faced a late Wednesday deadline to charge the suspects, release them or seek a judge’s extension.
Jewels not yet recovered
The jewels have not been recovered, Beccuau said.
“These jewels are now, of course, unsellable … Anyone who buys them would be guilty of concealment of stolen goods,” she warned. “It’s still time to give them back.”
Earlier Wednesday, French police acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defences – turning the dazzling daylight theft into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.
Paris Police Chief Patrice Faure told Senate lawmakers that ageing systems and slow-moving fixes left weak seams in the museum.
“A technological step has not been taken,” he said, noting that parts of the video network are still analog, producing lower-quality images that are slow to share in real time.
A long-promised revamp “will not be finished before 2029–2030”, he said.
Faure also disclosed that the Louvre’s authorisation to operate its security cameras quietly expired in July and wasn’t renewed – a paperwork lapse that some see as a symbol of broader negligence.
The police chief said officers “arrived extremely fast” after the theft, but added the lag in response occurred earlier in the chain – from first detection, to museum security, to the emergency line, to police command.
Faure and his team said the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s alarms, but from a cyclist outside who dialed the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift.
Within 24 hours of the Louvre heist, a museum in eastern France reported the theft of gold and silver coins after finding a smashed display case.
Last month, thieves broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum and stole gold nuggets worth more than $1.5m. A Chinese woman has been detained and charged in relation to the theft.