An investigating judge charged the two detained by the French Police with participating in the theft of jewelry from the Louvre Museum on October 19 and ordered their provisional arrest, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office announced this Wednesday.
In a statement, the Prosecutor’s Office detailed that both were formally accused of “robbery in an organized gang and association of criminals with a view to committing a crime,” charges that can carry up to 15 and 10 years in prison, respectively.
The two suspects, who were in police custody since last weekend, are two men, one of 34 years of Algerian nationality and settled in France since 2010 – arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport just as he was trying to board to his country of origin -, and another Frenchman of 39 years of age and originally from Aubervilliers, on the outskirts of Paris.
Pretending to be workers, both are accused of entering the museum’s Apollo Gallery, thanks to a crane that lifted them to a balcony, from where they entered the gallery from which they took jewels from the French Crown valued at 88 million euros (more than 102 million dollars), although their heritage value is incalculable. The whereabouts of the stolen treasures have not yet been found.
During their police custody since last Sunday at the central premises of the Judicial Police (PJ) in Paris, the two suspects “partially recognized the facts,” said Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau at a press conference this Wednesday.
Find out: Those arrested for the Louvre robbery say they ‘partially recognize the facts’
Beccuau explained that the DNA traces of the two men found, detected on one of the motorcycles that the group used in the escape, were decisive for the progress of the investigations; and in the other, in one of the two display cases that were broken to steal the jewelry, as well as in some of the objects abandoned by the thieves in their escape.
Both suspects had criminal records, one of them for traffic offenses and the other for aggravated robbery, specifically for trying to steal an ATM by crashing a vehicle.
The robbery on October 19 at the Louvre, considered the robbery of the “century” by the French media, created a shower of criticism towards the management of the museum and the Ministry of Culture, which they blame for not having sufficiently protected one of the most emblematic institutions in the world.
Both the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, and the president of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, have been forced to give explanations to French parliamentarians to appease the national and international consternation caused by the event.
With information from EFE.
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