Three charged with Paris Ritz jewellery heist: judicial source

Three men were charged and detained Saturday over an audacious jewellery heist at the Ritz hotel in Paris this week, while two other suspects were still on the loose, a judicial source said.

Published: 13 January 2018 17:19 CET

Three charged with Paris Ritz jewellery heist: judicial source

Police at the back entrance to the Ritz hotel in Paris on January 10th, 2018. Photo: AFP

The men from the Paris region, who are in their 30s and are known to police, were arrested after becoming trapped by locked doors as they tried to flee the five-star hotel.

They were charged with organised theft using weapons, violence and causing damage.

The robbery on Wednesday evening saw a gang armed with hatchets and handguns burst into the hotel on the capital's glitzy Place Vendome and smash the display windows of jewellery shops on the ground floor.

Wearing balaclavas and gloves, the robbers entered through a rear staff entrance and swiped gems and watches worth over four million euros. All the loot was recovered, according to the source.

Two further suspects are being sought by police.

The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.