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Prosecutor confirms the arrests of suspects, including one detained while about to board a flight abroad.
Published On 26 Oct 2025
French authorities have made arrests in connection with the recent theft of jewellery from the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Paris prosecutor says.
Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement on Sunday that investigators made the arrests on Saturday evening, adding that one of the men taken into custody was preparing to leave the country from Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport.
The French newspaper Le Parisien and magazine Paris Match reported that the arrest at the airport took place about 10pm (20:00 GMT) on Saturday while a second suspect was arrested not long after in the Paris region, according to Le Parisien.
The newspaper said the man arrested at the airport had been about to board a flight to Algeria. It said both suspects were in their 30s, originally from the Seine-Saint-Denis area and known to French police.
The two men have been taken into police custody on suspicion of organised theft and criminal conspiracy, the AFP news agency reported.
Beccuau did not confirm the number of arrests in the operation, which was carried out by the police antigang brigade.
She condemned the premature leak of information about the arrests, saying it could hinder the work of investigators who were trying to “recover the stolen jewels and apprehend all of the perpetrators”.
Daylight robbery
The Louvre Museum in the French capital closed one week ago after a group of intruders stole eight pieces of priceless jewellery on October 19 in a four-minute heist in broad daylight that rocked the world’s most visited museum and was followed raptly around the globe.
The robbers had climbed the extendable ladder of a moving truck and cut into a first-floor gallery, taking advantage of what museum staff said was a blind spot in the security surveillance of the museum’s outside walls.
They dropped a crown as they fled down the ladder and onto scooters but managed to steal eight other pieces, including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon Bonaparte gave his second wife, Empress Marie Louise.
Officials said the jewels were worth an estimated $102m but have incalculable cultural value.
An intensive manhunt for the thieves has been ongoing and has involved dozens of investigators.
Beccuau said public and private security cameras had allowed detectives to track the thieves “in Paris and in surrounding regions” while investigators were also able to find dozens of DNA samples and fingerprints at the scene.
The brazen theft, which the Louvre’s director called a “terrible failure”, has made headlines across the world and sparked a debate in France about the security of cultural institutions.
Within 24 hours of the Louvre heist, a museum in eastern France reported the theft of gold and silver coins after finding a smashed display case.
Last month, thieves broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum and stole gold nuggets worth more than $1.5m. A Chinese woman has been detained and charged in relation to the theft.
