Paris prosecutor says 2 suspects in the Louvre jewel heist acknowledge their involvement

PARIS (AP) — 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 told 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 she said accomplices may listen.

It took thieves less than eight minutes to steal the jewels valued at 88 million euros ($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.

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 of them left onboard two motor scooters along the Seine River toward eastern Paris, where they had some other vehicles parked, she detailed.

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

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 60 kilometers (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.

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

People queue to enter Le Louvre museum Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau speaks during a news conference at the Paris courthouse Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025, on the judicial investigation into the jewels robbery at the Louvre museum in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau attend a news conference at the Paris courthouse Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025, on the judicial investigation into the jewels robbery at the Louvre museum in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

Head of the brigand of banditry repression Pascal Carreau, left, and Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau speaks attend a news conference at the Paris courthouse Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025, on the judicial investigation into the jewels robbery at the Louvre museum in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

Three cats dressed up in typical French outfits are positioned in the courtyard of Le Louvre museum Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

People queue to enter Le Louvre museum Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

A surveillance camera is seen on a facade of the Louvre museum, three days after historic jewels were stolen in a daring daylight heist, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police officers block an access to the Louvre museum after a robbery Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025, in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Riot police officers patrol as people queue to enter Le Louvre museum Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)