Louvre heist probe still aims to 'recover jewellery', top prosecutor says

"The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements," top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, almost three months after the broad-daylight heist.

But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.

"Our main objective is still to recover the jewellery," she said.

That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover's truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre's Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.

Two of the thieves hoisted themselves up the ladder in a furniture lift, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.

The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.

But eight other items of jewellery -- including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise -- remain at large.

Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.

"We don't have any signals indicating that the jewellery is likely to have crossed the border," she said, though she added: "Anything is possible."

Detectives benefitted from contacts with "intermediaries in the art world, including internationally" as they pursued their probe.

"They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad," Beccuau said.

As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be "active repentance, which could be taken into consideration" later during a trial, she said.

A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.

Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.

"It's a hypothesis under consideration, but it cannot be asserted as more certain than any other," the prosecutor said.

"We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft." 

But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.

"We haven't said our last word. It will take as long as it takes," she said.

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