PARIS — The dragnet tightened around the Louvre on Thursday. Five more people were seized in the crown-jewels heist — including a suspect tied by DNA — the Paris prosecutor said, widening the sweep across the capital and its suburbs. Authorities said three of the four alleged members of the “commando” team, as French media have dubbed the robbers, are now in custody.
The late-night operations in Paris and nearby Seine-Saint-Denis lift the total arrested to seven. Prosecutor Laure Beccuau told RTL that one detainee is suspected of belonging to the brazen quartet that burst into the Apollo Gallery in broad daylight on Oct. 19; others held “may be able to inform us about how the events unfolded.”
Beccuau called the response an “exceptional mobilisation” — about 100 investigators, seven days a week, with roughly 150 forensic samples analyzed and 189 items sealed as evidence.
Even so, she said the latest arrests did not uncover the loot — a trove valued around $102 million that includes a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise as a wedding gift, jewels tied to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.
