The Paris prosecutor said on Sunday that two suspects have been arrested over the theft of crown jewels from the Louvre museum.
The prosecutor said investigators made the arrests on Saturday evening, adding that one of the men taken into custody was preparing to take a plane out of the country.
One of the two suspects was about to leave France and was arrested at Charles de Gaulle Airport at about 10 p.m. on Saturday. Another suspect was arrested later in the evening in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb north of Paris.
Paris police were not immediately available for comment.
Thieves broke into the landmark museum on Oct. 19, stealing eight precious pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $143 million Cdn from the Louvre’s collection before escaping on motorbike.
The heist exposed security lapses as they broke into the world’s most-visited museum using a crane to smash an upstairs window during opening hours. They escaped on motorbikes.
News of the robbery reverberated around the world, prompting soul-searching in France over what some regarded as a national humiliation.
According to newspaper Le Parisien, the two suspects are in their 30s and originally from the Seine-Saint-Denis area.
They were known to French police, and one of the suspects was about to depart for Algeria, the newspaper said.
A gang of thieves entered the Louvre museum through a window, took some of the French crown jewels and fled on motorbikes into Paris.
