One of the defendants in France in the Louvre robbery case has said that the mastermind behind the operation may be a foreigner, writes the newspaper "Parisien".
According to the publication, two of the defendants admitted to investigators that they acted on the instructions of some masterminds from a criminal organization. One of them mentioned a possible mastermind abroad, but did not give his name.
One of the defendants also said that he did not know that he was robbing the main museum of France. According to him, he thought he had broken into a museum that was "just next to...the pyramid".
The other defendant claims that he thought he was breaking into "some closed building where there shouldn't be any visitors on Sunday".
V. "Parisien" wrote that the detainees were most likely "just cogs in the complex mechanism of the robbery".
According to the newspaper, one of the suspects is a blogger known on social networks under the pseudonym Doudou Cross Bitume, who performs stunts on a motorcycle.
According to the investigators' version, he is one of two people who broke into the Louvre building. He had previously attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies 15 times, including as a participant in a robbery of a jewelry store. In the Louvre robbery case, however, he will be tried under the article of intentional damage to state property, not robbery.
The four suspects in the Louvre robbery currently remain in custody, with charges brought against them. It is believed that two of them smashed the windows in the museum, while the third waited for them under the windows on a scooter.
On October 19, the four perpetrators entered the Louvre using an auto-hydraulic lift. During the robbery, display cases in the Apollo Gallery were smashed and French crown jewels, valued at 88 million euros, were stolen.
Paris prosecutor Laure Becuo also suggested that the perpetrators may be foreigners. More than 100 investigators are working on the case, but so far no traces of the stolen jewels have been found.