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PARIS (AP) — Suspects person been arrested successful transportation with the theft of crown jewel s from Paris’ Louvre museum, the Paris authoritative said connected Sunday, a week aft the heist that stunned the world.
The authoritative said that investigators made the arrests connected Saturday evening, adding that 1 of the men taken into custody was preparing to permission the state from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.
French media BFM TV and Le Parisien paper earlier reported that 2 suspects had been arrested and taken into custody. Paris authoritative Laure Beccuau did not corroborate the fig of arrests and did not accidental whether immoderate jewels had been recovered.
Thieves took little than 8 minutes past Sunday greeting to bargain jewels valued astatine 88 cardinal euros ($102 million) from the world’s most-visited museum. French officials described however the intruders utilized a handbasket assistance to standard the Louvre’s façade, forced unfastened a window, smashed show cases and fled. The museum’s manager called the incidental a “terrible failure.”
Beccuau said investigators from a peculiar constabulary portion successful complaint of equipped robberies, superior burglaries and creation thefts made the arrests. In her statement, she rued the premature leak of information, saying it could hinder the enactment of implicit 100 investigators “mobilized to retrieve the stolen jewels and apprehend each of the perpetrators.” Beccuau said further details volition beryllium unveiled aft the suspects’ custody play ends.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez praised “the investigators who person worked tirelessly, conscionable arsenic I asked them to, and who person ever had my afloat confidence.”
The Louvre reopened earlier this week aft 1 of the highest-profile depository thefts of the period stunned the satellite with its audacity and scale.
The thieves slipped successful and out, making disconnected with parts of France’s Crown Jewels — a taste coiled that immoderate compared to the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral successful 2019.
The thieves made distant with a full of 8 objects, including a sapphire diadem, necklace and azygous earring from a acceptable linked to 19th-century queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense.
They besides took an emerald necklace and earrings tied to Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s 2nd wife, arsenic good arsenic a reliquary brooch. Empress Eugénie’s diamond diadem and her ample corsage-bow brooch — an imperial ensemble of uncommon craftsmanship — were besides portion of the loot.
One portion — Eugénie’s emerald-set imperial crown with much than 1,300 diamonds — was aboriginal recovered extracurricular the museum, damaged but repairable.
News of the arrests was met with alleviation by Louvre visitors and passersby connected Sunday.
“It’s important for our heritage. A week later, it does consciousness a spot late, we wonderment however this could adjacent hap — but it was important that the guys were caught,” said Freddy Jacquemet.
“I deliberation the main happening present is whether they tin retrieve the jewels," added Diana Ramirez. “That’s what truly matters.”
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Petrequin reported from London.
