Cousin of Suspected Robber in Louvre Museum Heist Speaks Out

A cousin of one of the suspected robbers in the Louvre heist recently spoke out in an interview with ABC News. A man identified as Mehdy, who claims to be the cousin of one of the suspected Louvre robbers, told ABC News James Longman in an exclusive new interview for the television special Impact x Nightline that his cousin was someone who did small jobs and worked in a place where they sell fruit, things like that, who tried to get by.

And who had kids. Four suspects were arrested in connection to the heist last month, with one still believed to be at large. Of the four, one was a taxi driver and the other a delivery man and garbage collector, who was arrested at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport while trying to flee on a one-way flight to Algeria.

The other two are a man and woman who have been identified as domestic partners with two children together; the woman was recently released from police custody and placed under judicial supervision on Wednesday. The thieves are reported to be locals of Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris. As the investigation into the heist continues, the public has been learning more about the identities of the suspects, including one who was identified earlier this month as Abdoulaye N.

While Mehdy didn t offer any insight as to why his cousin may have robbed the Louvre, he expressed some words of wisdom for him: But if I had to tell him something before he went to do that, really, if he truly did it and I speak in the conditional, I would have told him, you know these jewels, they belong to you, it’s your heritage, if you want them you just have to go to the museum, you don’t need to go through the window or anything. On Sunday, October 19, around 9:30 a.m., robbers broke into the Parisian museum‘s Apollo Gallery using a cherry picker and an angle grinder to steal nine pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $102 million in less than eight minutes.

CCTV footage captured the thieves descending from a gallery window before fleeing the area on scooters. One of the nine pieces, a crown once belonging to Empress Eugénie, was subsequently recovered outside the Louvre. In a hearing with the French senate, Louvre Museum director Laurence des Cars said that alarms functioned properly and went off during the heist. But she admitted that the museum has “very inadequate” and “outdated” security systems in place.

Though the Louvre recently rolled out a set of emergency security measures, the full extent of the recommended security changes, according to a French national audit, are “not expected to be finished until 2032.” Like many in France who view the robbery as a wound to national pride, the theft also reportedly upset Medhy: It hurts my French heritage, Napoleon’s story, he said. Adding, It pisses me off for my country. The remaining eight missing artifacts have yet to be recovered.