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Two Louvre heist suspects a couple with children: prosecutor / Photo: Dimitar DILKOFF - AFP
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Two Louvre heist suspects a couple with children: prosecutor
Small-time criminals are believed to be behind the spectacular jewel heist at the Louvre, the top Paris prosecutor said Sunday, adding that two of the suspects are a couple with children.
Last month, a four-man gang raided the Louvre, the world's most-visited art museum, in broad daylight, taking just seven minutes to steal jewellery worth an estimated $102 million before fleeing on high-powered scooters.
The men parked a truck with an extendable ladder below the museum's Apollo Gallery which housed the French crown jewels, clambered up, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut into glass display booths containing the treasures.
Two men suspected of being the pari who broke into the gallery while their two accomplices waited outside have been detained, charged and remanded in custody.
Prosecutors said on Saturday that two more suspects -- a man and a woman -- were also charged and remanded in custody. At least one other perpetrator remains at large, French officials say.
The stolen jewels have not been recovered.
On Sunday, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that the suspects, who lived in the French capital's bleak northern suburbs, were believed to be small-time criminals and not members of organised crime groups.
Their profiles do not correspond to those "generally associated with the upper echelons of organised crime," Beccuau told France Info.
Beccuau said that the the 37-year-old man and 38-year-old woman charged on Saturday were a couple and had children together.
They have "denied any involvement", Beccuau said.
The man "refused to make any statement", the prosecutor added.
The man has been charged with organised theft and criminal conspiracy, while his partner has been charged with complicity in organised theft and criminal conspiracy.
The woman was in tears as she appeared at a Paris court on Saturday, saying she feared for her children and for herself.
The couple were arrested after their DNA was found in the basket lift used during the robbery.
"Significant" DNA evidence linking the man to the crime was found in the basket lift, the prosecutor said. Traces of his partner's DNA were also found but they might have been transferred there through contact with a person or object, she added.
"All this will need to be investigated," Beccuau said.
The man's criminal record contained 11 previous convictions, most of them for theft, she said.
The first two men arrested earlier were also known to the police for having committed thefts.
G.Durand--PS
