Thieves of France’s crown jewels have been offered lighter sentences if they return the stolen goods. Photo / Getty Images
The thieves who stole France’s crown jewels have been told they will receive lighter sentences if they hand themselves in and return the stolen goods.
The plea from Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, came after the arrest of a prime suspect and four other people thought to be involved in the robbery.
The jewels, priceless to France but worth €88m ($177.5m), have not been found 10 days after a daring daylight raid on the world’s most visited museum.
In an interview with RTL radio on Thursday, Beccuau sought to encourage those in possession of the treasures to surrender them.
“Obviously, the court will take into account the fact that no harm was done in this burglary,” she said.
“Co-operation in the investigation will obviously be taken into account in determining the sentence,” she stated more explicitly.
Five suspects were arrested on Wednesday evening “in various locations” in the centre of Paris and the city’s metropolitan area.
“One of them was one of the targets of the investigators; we have DNA evidence linking him to the theft. He is one of the suspects we had in our sights,” Beccuau added.
“As for the other individuals [arrested], they may be able to provide us with information about how the burglary unfolded,” she said.
However, she said the searches “did not enable us to recover the stolen goods from this burglary”.
“Like any investigation, this investigation is like a breadcrumb trail,” said Beccuau, adding: “My role is not to be worried [about the fate of the jewellery] but to be determined”.
Two other male suspects, aged 34 and 39, who were arrested over the weekend, were charged on Wednesday with “organised theft and criminal conspiracy to commit a crime” and placed in pre-trial detention.
They “partially admitted to the facts” and were suspected of being the individuals who “entered the Galerie d’Apollon to steal the jewellery”, the prosecutor said.
Réda Ghilaci and David Bocobza, the lawyers for the 34-year-old suspect, insisted on the need for “the utmost respect for the secrecy of the investigation and the inquiry” in this case.
“The only comment we can give you this evening is that there is a huge gap between the extraordinary nature of this case and the completely ordinary personality of our client,” they told reporters.
According to Le Parisien, the “main suspect” who was arrested on Wednesday is one of the two motorcyclists who were present during the robbery.
The French newspaper said the man had been identified and placed under surveillance before his arrest. It was through identifying him that the police could arrest the four other suspects.
Regarding the two suspects charged on Wednesday, Beccuau told RTL that they “admitted that they were involved in the burglary”.
The prosecutor specified that the five new arrests were not linked to the statements made by the first two suspects, whom she said were not viewed to be “at the top end of the organised crime spectrum”, given their criminal records.
She added: “At this stage, there is no evidence to suggest that the criminals had any accomplices within the museum”.
However, “we cannot rule out the possibility” of a much larger group than the four criminals identified by surveillance cameras, she said.
On Wednesday, Beccuau also expressed regret that the stolen jewellery was “not yet in our possession”.
“I want to remain hopeful that it will be found and returned to the Louvre Museum and, more broadly, to the nation,” she told the press.
She said the stolen gems were “obviously unsellable” and anyone who bought them “would be guilty of receiving stolen goods. There is still time to hand them in”.
The thieves dropped a diamond and emerald-studded crown as they escaped, and police found a high-vis yellow vest several minutes away by scooter that they believed belonged to one of the culprits.
The burglars made off with eight other items of jewellery. Among them were an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave Empress Marie-Louise, his wife, and a diadem that once belonged to the Empress Eugénie, which is dotted with nearly 2000 diamonds.
The theft has triggered a debate in France over the security of cultural institutions. Less than 24 hours after the high-profile break-in, a museum in eastern France reported the theft of gold and silver coins after finding a smashed display case.
Laurence des Cars, the director of the Louvre, admitted last week that security cameras did not adequately cover the thieves’ point of entry. But she defended a multi-million-euro plan to increase security at the museum.
On Wednesday, a senatorial commission of inquiry into the thefts led to criticism of the Louvre for failing to bolster security.
Patrice Faure, the new police chief of Paris, upbraided the museum for an “administrative breach” of duty by failing to ask for its security cameras to be modernised. Some are still analogue.
Agnès Evren, a Right-wing Republicans senator, admitted to being “appalled and very saddened by this obsolescence”.
The commission revealed that 278 museums in France have no CCTV whatsoever.
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