As a manhunt continued on Monday for suspects in the Louvre Museum jewel heist, the Paris Prosecutor said she fears the investigation might be harmed by the “hasty disclosure” over the weekend of the arrests of two other robbery suspects.
Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the information made public about the arrests in the Louvre case should not have been disclosed.
“I deeply regret the hasty disclosure of this information by informed individuals, without consideration of the investigation,” Beccuau said in a statement her office released Sunday night.
Beccuau added, “This revelation can only harm the investigative efforts of a hundred or so investigators” searching for the stolen jewelry and the perpetrators still at large.
Under French law, the suspects in custody can be held for 96 hours before prosecutors have to charge or release them.
“It is too early to provide any further details,” Beccuau said. “I will provide additional information at the end of this custody phase.”
Two men, both in their 30s, from a Paris suburb were arrested over the weekend, accused of being part of the team that pulled off the brazen jewel heist, French National Police confirmed to ABC News.
One suspect was arrested at 10 p.m. on Saturday at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport while trying to board a plane bound for Algeria, police said.
The second suspect was nabbed by police as he was about to travel to Mali, in West Africa, an investigator with the Paris Brigade for the Repression of Banditry (BRB), the special police unit spearheading the probe, and a source with the French Interior Ministry directly connected to the investigation told ABC News.
Both suspects, whose names have not been publicly released, are French nationals who live in Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris, according to investigators.
One of the suspects has dual citizenship in France and Mali, and the other is a dual citizen of France and Algeria, investigators said, adding that both were already known to police from past burglary cases.
Investigators said they matched trace DNA evidence recovered from a helmet left at the scene of the crime to one of the suspects, enabling police to put the alleged thief under phone and physical surveillance.
Both suspects are believed to have played active roles in the brazen Oct. 19 robbery at the Louvre, in which eight precious pieces of jewelry, including crowns containing thousands of diamonds and other precious gemstones, were stolen, according to the sources.
Investigators say they’re still determining whether a source inside the Louvre may have had a role in the theft.
In what appeared to be an intricately planned robbery, a team of thieves drove up to the side of the museum in what police described as a stolen truck with a “mobile freight elevator” or cherry picker on the back that was extended up to a window, according to the Paris police.
Two of the thieves dressed as construction workers used the cherry picker to get up to the second floor, where they cut through the window of the Apollo Gallery using angle grinders, authorities said.
Upon entering the gilded gallery, the thieves used power tools to cut into the glass cases to reach the precious jewels, investigators said.
The entire theft took about seven minutes, according to investigators.
Beccuau estimated that $102 million worth of jewels, including crowns, necklaces, earrings and a diamond-encrusted brooch that once belonged to Emperor Napoleon and his wife, were stolen.
“They knew exactly where they were going. It looks like something very organized and very professional,” French Culture Minister Rachida Dati told ABC News last week.
The whereabouts of the jewels remain a mystery.
Among the jewelry taken was a pearl and diamond tiara from the collection of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense, according to the Louvre. The tiara, according to the Louvre, is composed of 212 pearls of various sizes and nearly 2,000 diamonds. The piece was commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III for his marriage to Eugenie de Montijo in 1853.
Also stolen was another tiara from the collection of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense that is composed of sapphires and more than 1,000 diamonds, according to the Louvre.
One crown made of gold, diamonds and emeralds that once belonged to Empress Eugenie was damaged during the theft and discovered on the street outside the museum, Dati told ABC News.
While testifying before France’s Senate Culture Committee on Wednesday, Laurence des Cars, president and director of the Louvre, described the heist as “an immense wound that has been inflicted on us.”
Des Cars said all of the museum’s alarms worked properly, as did its video cameras, but noted a “weakness” in security that was taken advantage of by the thieves. She said the only camera installed outside the Apollo Gallery was facing west and did not cover the window where the thieves broke in and exited.
“The weakness of the Louvre is its perimeter security, which has been a problem for a long time … certainly due to underinvestment,” des Cars told the lawmakers.
Des Cars added, “We did not spot the criminals arriving from outside early enough.”
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