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PARIS — Two suspects in the Louvre jewel heist on Wednesday were handed preliminary charges of criminal conspiracy and theft committed by an organized gang, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor said they admitted their involvement.

Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said at a news conference that the two are believed to be the men who forced their way into the world’s most visited museum Oct. 19, and that at least two other accomplices are at large. The jewels remain missing.

The two were given preliminary charges and ordered held in custody pending further investigation, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

They have “partially” admitted their participation in the robbery, Beccuau said. She declined to provide details about the suspects’ statements to investigators because accomplices were still being sought.

It took thieves less than eight minutes to steal the jewels valued at $102 million on Oct. 19, shocking the world. The robbers forced open a window, cut into cases with power tools and fled with eight pieces of the French crown jewels.

Suspects’ DNA was found

The two men arrested on Saturday night “are suspected of being the ones who broke into the Apollo Gallery to steal the jewels,” Beccuau said.

One is a 34-year-old Algerian national who has been living in France since 2010, Beccuau said. He was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport as he was about to fly to Algeria with no return ticket. He was living in a suburb north of Paris, Aubervilliers, and was known to police mostly for road traffic offenses. His DNA was found on one of the scooters used by robbers to leave the scene, she said.

The other suspect, 39, was arrested at his home in Aubervilliers. “There is no evidence to suggest that he was about to leave the country,” Beccuau said. The man was known to police for several thefts, and his DNA was found on one of the glass cases where the jewels were displayed and on items the thieves left behind, she added.

Video surveillance cameras showed there were at least four criminals involved, Beccuau said.

The four suspected robbers arrived onboard a truck equipped with a freight lift that two of them used to climb up to the museum’s window. The four left on two motor scooters along the Seine River toward eastern Paris, where they had some other vehicles parked, she said.

Beccuau said nothing suggests that the robbers had any accomplices within the museum’s staff.

The jewels are still missing

The jewels have not been recovered, Beccuau said.

“These jewels are now, of course, unsellable … Anyone who buys them would be guilty of concealment of stolen goods,” she warned. “There’s still time to give them back.”

Earlier Wednesday, French police acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defenses — turning the dazzling daylight theft into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.

Paris Police Chief Patrice Faure told Senate lawmakers that aging systems and slow-moving fixes left weak seams in the museum.

“A technological step has not been taken,” he said, noting that parts of the video network are still analog, producing lower-quality images that are slow to share in real time.

A long-promised revamp — a $93-million project requiring roughly 37 miles of new cabling — “will not be finished before 2029-2030,” he said.

Faure also disclosed that the Louvre’s authorization to operate its security cameras quietly expired in July and wasn’t renewed — a paperwork lapse that some see as a symbol of broader negligence.

The police chief said officers “arrived extremely fast” after the theft, but added the lag in response occurred earlier in the chain — from first detection, to museum security, to the emergency line, to police command.

Faure and his team said the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s alarms but from a cyclist outside who dialed the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift.

Faure urged lawmakers to authorize tools currently off-limits: AI-based anomaly detection and object tracking (not facial recognition) to flag suspicious movements and follow scooters or gear across city cameras in real time.

Former bank robber David Desclos has told the AP the theft was textbook and vulnerabilities were glaringly obvious in the layout of the gallery.

Museum and culture officials under pressure

Culture Minister Rachida Dati, under pressure, has refused the Louvre director’s resignation and insisted that alarms worked, while acknowledging “security gaps did exist.”

The museum was already under strain. In June, the Louvre shut in a spontaneous staff strike — including security agents — over unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and “untenable” conditions. Unions say mass tourism and construction pinch points create blind spots, a vulnerability underscored by the thieves who rolled a basket lift to the Seine-facing façade.

Faure said police will now track surveillance-permit deadlines across institutions to prevent repeats of the July lapse. But he stressed the larger fix is disruptive and slow: ripping out and rebuilding core systems while the palace stays open, and updating the law so police can act on suspicious movement in real time.

Experts fear that the stolen pieces may already be broken down and stones recut to erase their past.

Adamson and Corbet write for the Associated Press.

The suspects face charges for theft committed by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy, prosecutor says.

Two men arrested over a jewel heist at France’s Louvre Museum are to be charged with theft and criminal conspiracy after “partially admitting to the charges”, Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau has said.

The suspects were to be brought before magistrates with a view to “charging them with organised theft, which carries a 15-year prison sentence”, and criminal conspiracy, punishable by 10 years, Beccuau told a press conference on Wednesday. The jewellery stolen on October 19 has “not yet been recovered”, Beccuau said.

Two suspects in the Louvre jewel heist have “partially” admitted their participation and are believed to be the men who forced their way into the world’s most visited museum, a Paris prosecutor said.

Beccuau said that the two suspects face preliminary charges of theft committed by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy, and are expected to be held in provisional detention. She did not give details about their comments.

It took thieves less than eight minutes to steal the jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102m), shocking the world. The thieves forced open a window, cut into cases with power tools, and fled with eight pieces of the French crown jewels.

One suspect is a 34-year-old Algerian national who has been living in France since 2010, Beccuau said. He was arrested Saturday night at Charles de Gaulle Airport as he was about to fly to Algeria with no return ticket. He was living in Paris’s northern suburb of Aubervilliers and was known to police mostly for road traffic offences, Beccuau said.

The other suspect, 39, was arrested Saturday night at his home, also in Aubervilliers.

“There is no evidence to suggest that he was about to leave the country,” Beccuau said. The man was known to police for several thefts, and his DNA was found on one of the glass cases where the jewels were displayed and on items the thieves left behind, she added.

Prosecutors had faced a late Wednesday deadline to charge the suspects, release them or seek a judge’s extension.

Jewels not yet recovered

The jewels have not been recovered, Beccuau said.

“These jewels are now, of course, unsellable … Anyone who buys them would be guilty of concealment of stolen goods,” she warned. “It’s still time to give them back.”

Earlier Wednesday, French police acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defences – turning the dazzling daylight theft into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.

Paris Police Chief Patrice Faure told Senate lawmakers that ageing systems and slow-moving fixes left weak seams in the museum.

“A technological step has not been taken,” he said, noting that parts of the video network are still analog, producing lower-quality images that are slow to share in real time.

A long-promised revamp “will not be finished before 2029–2030”, he said.

Faure also disclosed that the Louvre’s authorisation to operate its security cameras quietly expired in July and wasn’t renewed – a paperwork lapse that some see as a symbol of broader negligence.

The police chief said officers “arrived extremely fast” after the theft, but added the lag in response occurred earlier in the chain – from first detection, to museum security, to the emergency line, to police command.

Faure and his team said the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s alarms, but from a cyclist outside who dialed the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift.

Within 24 hours of the Louvre heist, a museum in eastern France reported the theft of gold and silver coins after finding a smashed display case.

Last month, thieves broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum and stole gold nuggets worth more than $1.5m. A Chinese woman has been detained and charged in relation to the theft.

ORLANDO, Fla. — U.S. government lawyers say that detainees at the immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” probably include people who have never been in removal proceedings, which is a direct contradiction of what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been saying since it opened in July.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice made that admission Thursday in a court filing arguing that the detainees at the facility in the Everglades wilderness don’t have enough in common to be certified as a class in a lawsuit over whether they’re getting proper access to attorneys.

A removal proceeding is a legal process initiated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to determine if someone should be deported from the United States.

The Justice Department attorneys wrote that the detainees at the Everglades facility have too many immigration statuses to be considered a class.

“The proposed class includes all detainees at Alligator Alcatraz, a facility that houses detainees in all stages of immigration processing — presumably including those who have never been in removal proceedings, those who will be placed into removal proceedings, those who are already subject to final orders of removal, those subject to expedited removal, and those detained for the purpose of facilitation removal from the United States pursuant to a final order of removal,” they wrote.

Since the facility opened, DeSantis has been saying publicly that each detainee has gone through the process of determining that they can’t legally be in the United States.

During a July 25 news conference outside the detention center, DeSantis said, “Everybody here is already on a final removal order.”

“They have been ordered to be removed from the country,” he added.

At a July 29 speech before a conference of the Florida Sheriffs Assn., the Republican governor said, “The people that are going to the Alligator Alcatraz are illegally in the country. They’ve all already been given a final order of removal.”

He added, “So, if you have an order to be removed, what is the possible objection to the federal government enforcing that removal order?”

DeSantis’ press office didn’t respond Monday morning to an email seeking comment.

The court filing by the Justice Department attorneys was made in a lawsuit in which civil rights groups allege the facility’s detainees have been denied proper access to attorneys in violation of their constitutional rights. The civil rights groups on Thursday asked a federal judge in Fort Myers, Fla., for a preliminary injunction that would establish stronger protections for detainees to meet with attorneys privately and share documents confidentially.

The court case is one of three lawsuits filed by environmental and civil rights groups over the detention center, which was hastily built this summer by the state of Florida and operated by private contractors and state agencies.

A federal judge in Miami ordered in August that the facility must wind down operations within two months, agreeing with environmental groups that the remote airstrip site wasn’t given a proper environmental review before it was converted into an immigration detention center. But operations continued after the judge’s preliminary injunction was put on hold in early September by an appellate court panel. At one point, the facility held more than 900 detainees, but most of them were transferred after the initial injunction. It wasn’t clear on Monday how many detainees were at the center, which was built to hold 3,000 people.

President Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be a model for future lockups nationwide as his administration pushes to expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations. Federal officials on Friday confirmed that Florida has been approved for a $608-million reimbursement for the costs of building and running the immigration detention center.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.