Police have made five new arrests linked to the Louvre heist, in which jewels worth $102 million were stolen from the museum’s Apollo gallery, home to the French Crown Jewels, French media reported on Thursday.
French radio station RTL said five new suspects had been arrested simultaneously in different parts of the capital on Wednesday evening. French TV station BFM had said earlier on Thursday that a man suspected of being present at the crime scene when the brazen daylight robbery took place had been detained.
The new arrests follow the detention over the weekend of two men suspected of breaking into the museum through an upstairs window and stealing the precious pieces. The pair had “partially admitted” their involvement in the heist under interrogation, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told a press conference on Wednesday.
The heist exposed security lapses at the world’s most-visited museum and was seen by many as a cause for national humiliation.
Beccuau said on Wednesday she did not rule out the possibility of a larger group, including a person who could have ordered the theft and been the mastermind behind it. The new suspects can be detained for up to four days before being charged or released.
The jewels remain missing
Items worth $102m were taken from the Louvre on 19 October, when four thieves broke into the building in broad daylight. The precious jewels have not yet been recovered. On the day of the heist, the robbers arrived at 09:30, just after the museum opened to visitors, Beccuau said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The suspects arrived with a stolen vehicle-mounted mechanical lift to gain access to the Galerie d’Apollon via a balcony close to the River Seine. The men used a disc cutter to crack open display cases housing the jewellery.
Beccuau said the thieves were inside for four minutes and made their escape on two scooters waiting outside at 09:38, before switching to cars and heading east. Nobody had been threatened during the raid.
Since the incident, security measures have been tightened around France’s cultural institutions.
The Louvre has transferred some of its most precious jewels to the Bank of France following the heist. They will now be stored in the Bank’s most secure vault, 26m (85ft) below the ground floor of its elegant headquarters in central Paris.