The theft in January 2019 of a Bataclan door, decorated with a drawing attributed to the artist Banksy in tribute to the victims of the attacks of November 13, had caused a great stir.

Eight men are sent to trial for stealing it and transporting it to Italy.

At the end of her investigations, an investigating judge of the Paris court signed an order on March 2 to refer the eight suspects to the criminal court, a judicial source told AFP on Sunday, confirming information from the newspaper

Le Parisian

.

Three are dismissed for aggravated theft and five for concealment of aggravated theft.

All are now free in this case: five have been placed under judicial control pending trial, the date of which has not yet been set, said this source.

Grinders

On the night of January 25 to 26, 2019 at 4 a.m., three men, masks on their faces, cut out the back door of the Parisian theater in a few minutes using electric grinders connected to a generator.

They then flee in a van with hidden license plates.

On this metal door, the street artist Banksy had painted in 2018 with stencil and white paint

The sad young girl

(the sad young girl) in tribute to the 90 people killed in the jihadist attack of November 13, 2015.

The Parisian judicial police are put on the trail of the commando thanks to information from the gendarmes of Isère in November 2019. They arrested three men in their thirties suspected of having robbed a DIY store, a few days before Banksy's Door Robbery.

“Meticulously prepared” flight

Their phones reveal that they were together in Paris the night of the theft of the door and, among the stolen objects figure thermal grinders and generators.

After several months of investigations, the investigators manage to trace the course of Banksy's work.

First transported to Isère, the door was taken the next day to the Var and then transferred to a hotel in Tortoreto, in Italian Abruzzo.

It was in a farm in Sant'Omero, about fifteen kilometers away, that she was finally discovered during an operation by French police and Italian carabinieri on June 10, 2020. A few days later, suspects were arrested in Isère, Haute-Savoie, Var, Rhône and Puy-de-Dôme.

One of them fled and will be arrested in March 2021.

The flight was "carefully prepared", describes the investigating judge in her order for dismissal, consulted by AFP.

The magistrate nevertheless abandoned the qualification of "organized gang" and requalified the facts as "theft and concealment of aggravated theft".

It remains to be determined who had the idea for this theft.

Culture

Banksy: Italy returns to France the work stolen from the Bataclan

Paris

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  • Culture

  • Banksy

  • Bataclan

  • Flight

  • Art

  • street art

  • Attacks of November 13