Suspects arrested for jewelry theft, prosecutor says

Two suspects have been arrested for the theft of precious crown jewels from the Louvre museum in Paris, French media say.

Paris prosecutors said one of the men had been detained while preparing to take a flight from Charles de Gaulle airport.

Items worth €88 million (£76 million; $102 million) were stolen from the world’s most visited museum last Sunday when four thieves armed with power tools broke into the building in broad daylight.

France’s justice minister admitted security protocols “failed,” leaving the country with a “terrible image.”

The arrests were made on Saturday night, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, without specifying how many people were detained.

One of the suspects was preparing to travel to Algeria, police sources told French media, while the other is understood to be heading to Mali.

Specialized police can interrogate them for a maximum of 96 hours.

The Paris prosecutor criticized the “premature disclosure” of information relating to the case, adding that it hinders efforts to recover the jewels and find the thieves.

The thieves reportedly arrived at 09:30 (06:30 GMT), shortly after the museum opened to visitors.

the suspects Came with a vehicle-mounted mechanical lift to access the Galerie d’Apollon (Gallery of Apollo) through a balcony near the Seine River.

Images from the scene showed the staircase leading to a first-floor window.

Two of the thieves broke in by cutting the window with power tools.

They then threatened the guards, who evacuated the premises and cut the glass of two display cases containing jewelry.

A preliminary report revealed that one in three rooms in the raided museum area did not have CCTV cameras, according to French media.

French police say the thieves were inside for four minutes and escaped on two scooters waiting outside at 9:38.

the museum director he told French senators this week that the only camera monitoring the outer wall of the Louvre through which they broke in was pointed in the opposite direction to the first-floor balcony leading to the Apollo Gallery.

Security cameras around the perimeter were also weak and “aging,” Laurence des Cars said, meaning staff were unable to detect the gang early enough to stop the robbery.

Experts have also expressed concern that the The jewels may have already broken into hundreds of pieces.

Gold and silver can be melted down and gems cut into smaller stones that will be virtually impossible to trace back to theft, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC.

Security measures around France’s cultural institutions have since been strengthened.

The Louvre has transferred some of its most prized jewels to the Bank of France following the robbery. They will now be stored in the Bank’s most secure vault, 26 meters (85 feet) below the ground floor of its elegant headquarters in central Paris.