The investigating judge of the Paris court in charge of the investigation issued a dismissal order on March 2, according to the source, confirming information from the newspaper Le Parisien.
In this investigation, eight people were indicted: three for theft in an organized gang and five for concealment of theft in an organized gang.
On the night of January 25 to 26, 2019 at 4:00 a.m., three men, masks on their faces, had cut out the back door of the Bataclan performance hall with a grinder in a few minutes, before fleeing in a van with aluminum plates. concealed registration.
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 work was found in Italy a year and a half after its theft, in June 2020, in a farmhouse in Abruzzo, during an operation by French police and Italian carabinieri.
Returned to France by the Italian authorities, the door was placed under seal and under close surveillance in the premises of the Paris judicial police.
In June 2020, six men suspected of having been part of the commando which had stolen the work and then transported to Italy had been indicted and imprisoned.
Two other suspects were indicted in 2021.
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 the judicial source.
Among the defendants is Mehdi Meftah, creator of a luxury T-shirt brand called "BL1.D" whose particularity is to sew a real 18-carat gold ingot on the neckline.
Suspected of being the sponsor of the theft, which he disputes, he would have liked, according to his accomplices, "to keep the door for one of his houses", had reported to AFP a source close to the investigation.
© 2022 AFP