Five new suspects have been arrested in connection with the Louvre robbery in Paris, in which thieves stole crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m), French media have reported.
Citing judicial sources, RTL radio said on Thursday the arrests had been made in connection with the heist, the most spectacular robbery in France in decades. BFMTV previously reported one new suspect had been arrested.
RTL said the arrests had been made overnight at properties around the Paris region. There was no immediate official confirmation of the reports, and no indication of whether the jewels had been recovered.
The Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau told a media conference on Wednesday evening that two men who had been arrested on Sunday had “partially admitted” their role but the gems were still missing.
Beccuau said the two suspects would be brought before magistrates “with a view to being charged with organised theft, which carries a 15-year prison sentence, and criminal conspiracy, punishable by 10 years”.
Hours before the pair had to be either charged or released, she said the jewels “are not in our possession”. But, in an apparent appeal to the thieves, she added: “There is still time to give them back.”
The four-man gang pulled up outside the world’s most visited museum at about 9.30am on 19 October in a stolen furniture removal truck fitted with an extending ladder and lift, in which two climbed to the ornate first-floor Apollo gallery.
Wearing hi-vis vests to resemble maintenance workers, they smashed an unsecured window and used disc cutters to slice open two glass display cases before descending in the bucket lift and fleeing on motorbikes driven by the other two men.
The heist lasted less than seven minutes, with the two who entered the gallery spending three minutes and 58 seconds inside. They dropped a diamond and emerald-studded crown but fled with eight richly gem-encrusted pieces.
The stolen jewels included an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave to his second wife, Marie Louise, and a diadem set with 212 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds that had once belonged to Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III.
Beccuau said the two suspects – both of whom were arrested on Saturday night, one at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris, reportedly as he was trying to catch a flight to Algeria – were believed to be the men who had entered the Apollo gallery.
Their DNA had been found on a display case and a scooter used in the getaway, the prosecutor said. She added that it was possible the gang had numbered more than four men but there was no indication so far it had benefited from inside help.
