Burglary of the Louvre museum: an alleged member of the commando sees his request for release refused

The Paris Court of Appeal decided on Wednesday October 22 to continue in pre-trial detention of an alleged member of the Louvre heist commando, who was scrapping to be released, we learned Thursday from a source close to the case.

Rachid H., 40 years old and imprisoned since November 28, 2025, had asked the investigating judges responsible for the investigations for his release which had been refused. He then referred the matter to the investigating chamber. A hearing was held behind closed doors on Wednesday.

On October 19, 2025, burglars, equipped with a movers' lift and equipped with grinders, stole the Crown Jewels on a Sunday morning, estimated at 88 million euros. The first two suspects were arrested on October 25 for this burglary which made headlines in France and abroad.

This is Abdoulaye N., an unlicensed taxi driver, already convicted of aggravated theft, baptized “Doudou Cross Bitume” on the internet for his ease with motocross. And Ghemlamallah A., an unemployed Algerian, convicted mainly for driving without a license. In police custody, the two thirty-somethings admitted their participation.

Seven months later, their new statements created a fault line in the investigation: they assured the judges that the two other alleged members of the commando, arrested after them, including Rachid H., had nothing to do with this spectacular theft. They also assured that the principal, whom they described differently, had participated in the heist, and had not yet been arrested. Rachid H. is notably suspected of having given the keys to the parking lot in Aubervilliers, from where investigators then lost track of the jewelry.

Rachid H. pleads ignorance. In January, he claimed, in his interrogation of which AFP was aware, to have "passed" the keys, after being woken up by "two people" they knew from Aubervilliers and who were "whistling" at him from the street to park a scooter. His defense noted that his client's genetic fingerprints had not been found "neither on the bucket truck" used in the heist, "nor in the parking lot", according to a source close to the case. Contacted, his lawyer, Fabien Arakelian, did not wish to comment.