PARIS ¨C The audacious daytime robbery of historical jewels worth $102 million from the Paris Louvre museum last month was executed by petty criminals rather than professionals from the world of organized crime, the Paris prosecutor said on Sunday.
On a Sunday morning two weeks ago, two men parked a movers¡¯ elevator outside the Louvre, rode up to the second story, smashed a window, cracked open display cases with angle grinders, and then fled on the back of scooters driven by two accomplices in a heist lasting less than seven minutes.
With three of the four suspected thieves now believed to be under arrest and the jewels still missing, their profiles do not resemble Ocean¡¯s Eleven-style professional gangsters, but small-time criminals from the hardscrabble northern suburbs of Paris, authorities say.
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