Inside the hunt for the Louvre heist suspects

French investigators examine the scene outside the Louvre's Apollo Gallery in Paris following last month's heist, in which thieves made off with items valued at more than $100 million. Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

It was early evening on Saturday, October 25, the surveillance team’s fourth day trailing a 34-year-old Algerian suspect through Seine-Saint-Denis, outside Paris.

The work had been tense and tedious. A diverse area, Seine-Saint-Denis is home to people of more than 130 nationalities , many of them of North African origin. For the surveillance team – an arm of the Paris Prefecture of Police known as the Brigade de Recherche et d’Intervention, or BRI – blending in among residents in tight-knit neighborhoods was challenging.

Now, the suspect was on the highway. The team did not