(PARIS) — As a deadline fast approaches to either charge to release two suspects in the $102 million Louvre jewel heist, the president of France’s Senate Culture Committee said the museum is “not up to standard” for guarding it against other bandits.
The Paris prosecutor has until Wednesday to decide whether to file charges when a 96-hour window expires on holding two French nationals arrested over the weekend, just as they were about to flee the country.
As the massive manhunt for at least two other perpetrators in the brazen robbery stretched into its 10th day, Laurent Lafon, president of the Senate Culture Committee, said the Oct. 19 jewel heist at the museum exposed major flaws in its security.
“We have a security system that does not meet what we would expect from a museum,” Lafon said on Tuesday while standing outside the world’s most visited museum.
Lafon said “numerous improvements need to be made” to correct flaws that enable a team of thieves to steal precious pieces of the French crown jewels and other treasures once belonging to Emperor Napoleon and his wife.
“The security equipment was not suitable for a museum worthy of the 21st century and for such a unique site for France. It is our flagship institution; it must be exemplary, and today, we cannot describe the security conditions as exemplary,” Lafon said.
Lafon spoke out ahead of a Wednesday hearing on the museum’s security issues.
In what appeared to be an intricately planned robbery, a team of thieves drove up to the side of the museum in what police described as a stolen truck with a “mobile freight elevator” or cherry picker on the back that was extended up to a window, according to the Paris police.
Two of the thieves dressed as construction workers used the cherry picker to get up to the second floor, where they cut through the window of the Apollo Gallery using angle grinders, authorities said. Upon entering the gilded gallery, the thieves used power tools to cut into the glass cases to reach the precious jewels, investigators said.
The entire theft took about seven minutes, according to investigators.
Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau estimated that $102 million worth of jewels were stolen, including crowns, necklaces, earrings and a diamond-encrusted brooch.
Over the weekend, police arrested two men, both in their 30s and from the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, French National Police confirmed to ABC News.
Investigators said they matched trace DNA evidence recovered from a helmet left at the scene of the crime to one of the suspects, enabling police to put the alleged thief under phone and physical surveillance.
One suspect was arrested at 10 p.m. on Saturday at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport while trying to board a plane bound for Algeria, according to police.
The second suspect was nabbed by police as he was about to travel to Mali, in West Africa, an investigator with the Paris Brigade for the Repression of Banditry (BRB), the special police unit spearheading the probe, and a source with the French Interior Ministry directly connected to the investigation told ABC News.
One of the suspects has dual citizenship in France and Mali, and the other is a dual citizen of France and Algeria, investigators said, adding that both were already known to police from past burglary cases.
Investigators say they’re still determining whether a source inside the Louvre may have had a role in the theft.
“They knew exactly where they were going. It looks like something very organized and very professional,” French Culture Minister Rachida Dati told ABC News last week.
While testifying before France’s Senate Culture Committee on Wednesday, Laurence des Cars, president and director of the Louvre, described the heist as “an immense wound that has been inflicted on us.”
Des Cars said all of the museum’s alarms worked properly, as did its video cameras, but noted a “weakness” in security that was taken advantage of by the thieves. She said the only camera installed outside the Apollo Gallery was facing west and did not cover the window where the thieves broke in and exited.
“The weakness of the Louvre is its perimeter security, which has been a problem for a long time … certainly due to underinvestment,” des Cars told the lawmakers.
Des Cars said a “Grand Louvre renovation project” began 40 years ago “and has only affected half of the museum.”
“We did not spot the criminals arriving from outside early enough,” des Cars said.
“The security system, as installed in the Apollo Gallery, worked perfectly,” des Cars said. “The question that arises is how to adapt this system to a new type of attack and modus operandi that we could not have foreseen.”
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