The first suspect was stopped at Charles de Gaulle Airport at 10 p.m. on Saturday, about to board a plane for Algeria. The second was picked up as he prepared to travel to Mali. Both were arrested a week after the Louvre jewel heist, French National Police told ABC News, and they were caught just before leaving France.
Investigators described both men as French nationals living in Seine Saint Denis, a Paris suburb. One holds dual citizenship with Mali, the other with Algeria. Neither name has been released. Both were already known to police from earlier burglary cases.
The break came from a helmet left behind at the scene. Investigators said trace DNA on it matched one of the suspects, which let police put him under phone and physical surveillance. Two other members of the four-man team are still being hunted nationwide, and investigators have not ruled out help from someone inside the Louvre. No word has emerged on where the jewels are. Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau has valued them at $102 million.
Eight minutes in the Apollo Gallery
The theft took place on the morning of October 19, shortly after the museum opened. The thieves pulled up beside the building in what police called a “mobile freight elevator”, with a metal ladder extended to a second-floor window, and put out construction cones around it. According to the police statement, they broke the window with an angle grinder, then used it again to smash two display cases holding the “Napoleon jewels” and the “French crown jewels”.
They took eight pieces, among them crowns, necklaces, earrings and brooches. Some had belonged to Napoleon and his wife. Four suspects left on two motorbikes, through central Paris and then southeast on the A6 toward Lyon.
Culture Minister Rachida Dati, who is overseeing the inquiry with the Justice Ministry, called it “a simple, but spectacular operation.” President Emmanuel Macron promised the culprits would be caught, describing the theft as an “attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history.”
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez praised the investigators in a social media post on Sunday. “We will continue with the same determination! Let’s keep going!” he wrote.
