'Two suspects' arrested for Louvre jewels heist

The Paris Prosecutor's Office confirmed on Sunday morning that suspects thought to have been involved in the robbery at the Louvre Museum had been arrested on Saturday evening, local media reported.

In the statement, Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor leading the investigation, also said one of the men arrested was preparing to leave the country from the Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport.

It was the first major development in the investigation into the Oct 19 daylight heist in which four people stole eight pieces of what has been called the French crown jewels, together worth 88 million euros ($102 million).

About 100 investigators had been mobilized to track down the perpetrators and in an attempt to recover the stolen items.

The statement did not specify the number of people who had been arrested or whether any of the missing items of jewelry had been recovered, adding that "it is too early to provide any details".

"I will provide further information at the end of this phase of police custody," stated Beccuau.

Various French media outlets reported that a total of two suspects had been detained, saying a second person had been apprehended in the Seine-Saint-Denis area shortly after the first arrest at the airport.

The men arrested are in their 30s and originally from Seine-Saint-Denis, a department of France located to the northeast of Paris, according to French media outlets Le Parisien and Paris Match. The area is known to include some of the country's most deprived neighborhoods.

Both men were taken into custody on charges of organized robbery and criminal conspiracy, Le Parisien and Paris Match reported.

In Beccuau's statement, she criticized the leak of information about the arrests, saying: "I deeply deplore the hasty disclosure of this information by informed individuals, without consideration for the investigation. This revelation can only harm the investigative efforts of the hundred or so investigators involved in the search for both the stolen jewelry and all the perpetrators."

The robbery at one of the world's most visited museums occurred at around 9:30 am local time last Sunday, when a gang of four people broke into the museum's Galerie d'Apollon, where the French crown jewels were kept.

The heist was over in less than seven minutes, concluding around 9:40 am, France's Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told France Inter radio.

Laurence des Cars, president and director of the Louvre Museum, said during a hearing at the French Senate on Wednesday that the only camera monitoring the exterior wall where the burglars broke in had been facing away from the balcony.

Police have warned that they may never recover the eight pieces of antique jewelry taken in the raid, because they could have already been broken into their constituent pearls, sapphires, emeralds, diamonds and gold.

The museum has transferred some of its most precious jewels to the Bank of France since the heist, where they will be stored in the most secure vault of the bank's headquarters in central Paris, 26 meters below the ground floor, the BBC reported.