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Stolen Picasso painting found
04/11/2003 20:55 - (SA)
Paris - French police said on Tuesday they had recovered 258 stolen paintings, including one by Pablo Picasso, and arrested three suspects, capping a months-long inquiry into a May 2002 burglary at a collector's home.
The works - including the Picasso, two canvases by French Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy and one by Dutchman Kees van Dongen - were found on Monday in a small van parked near the Champs-Elysees in the heart of the French capital.
Police also seized 2kg of cocaine and several firearms at the scene.
The paintings were being catalogued to see whether they all belonged to the French collector, investigators said.
In May 2002, the art aficionado - the heir to a textile empire that includes the Lacoste label - was attacked by a group of armed, masked men in his home in Breviandes outside Reims in northeast France.
The assailants bound the hands and feet of the man and his family members, and then made off with almost his entire art collection, including the works by the 20th century masters.
French national and local police, along with art theft experts, launched a sweeping investigation, and in September they arrested about 15 travellers, including several members of a nomadic family well-known to the authorities.
Besides their suspected links with the Breviandes burglary, some of those detained had participated in an armed robbery carried out in broad daylight and mid-sale at an auction house in Fontainebleau outside Paris.
But none of the stolen artworks was recovered, so police pursued their probe, investigating several families of travellers until they identified the three men arrested in Paris on Monday in possession of the stolen works.
Two of those being held in connection with the art theft are known to authorities for previous armed robberies, thefts and violent burglaries, police said on Tuesday.
- AFP
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