A French police brigade based in the Seine-Saint-Denis département (county) that rings north-east Paris has been disolved after four of its officers were placed under investigation on Thursday for alleged extorsion, theft, and posession of drugs, and three of them for violence, while further investigations are underway into other accusations against members of the unit.
A French couple are facing prosecution and a possible jail term of between one and six years after Italian police found 40 kilos of sand they took from a beach in Chia, southern Sardinia, crammed into plastic bottles in the boot of their vehicle.
Award-winning cellist Ophélie Gaillard was robbed by a knife-wielding thief of her 18th-century cello, estimated to be worth 1.3 million euros, outside her home in the Paris suburb of Pantin on Thursday, but after an impassioned appeal for its return relayed by social media she received an anonymous call to inform her it had been placed in a car in front of her house, where she found it.
A Paris court on Monday handed Vjeran Tomic, 49, nicknamed 'Spider Man' for his climbing exploits to steal valuable gems and works of art from Parisian apartments and museums, and two accomplices jail sentences of between six and eight years and a fine of 104 million euros over a 2010 theft from the Musée d’Art Moderne of a Matisse, a Picasso, a Braque, a Léger and a Modigliani, none of which have ever been found.
