Eight men were sentenced for the theft or transport of a door to the Parisian Bataclan concert hall decorated with a work by Banksy.
Eight men were sentenced Thursday in Paris to terms of up to two years in prison for having stolen or transported to Italy a door of the Parisian concert hall Bataclan decorated with a work by Banksy, produced in tribute to the victims of the attacks of November 13, 2015.
One of the three thirty-somethings who admitted the theft, committed on the night of January 25 to 26, 2019, was sentenced to four years in prison, including two years, and the other two to three years in prison, including 18 months.
Contrary to the requisitions of the public prosecutor, who had asked for an immediate continuation or return to detention, they will serve the firm part of their sentences under an electronic bracelet.
The 30-somethings mentioned an operation mounted by greed, due to Banksy’s exponential rating on the art market, without thinking of the “symbol”. One claimed to have been “threatened” and coerced into participating.
Another 41-year-old defendant, a millionaire after winning the lottery and a fan of street-art, was sentenced to three years in prison, including 20 months, to be served there also under an electronic bracelet. The court did not follow the accusation which considered him to be the sponsor of the theft, condemning him only for concealment of the door.
A “symbol of meditation”
Three men who participated in the transport of the work at different stages were sentenced to 10 months in prison, while a 58-year-old Italian, owner of a hotel in Abruzzo where the Banksy was once stored, is given a six-month suspended sentence.
The “sad girl”, claimed by the street-artist with a mysterious identity, had been stencilled in June 2018 on a door, in an alley by which many spectators fled the attack which affected the theater on November 13, 2015.
That evening, the jihadists had targeted several places in the Paris region, killing a total of 130 people. The trial of these attacks is currently underway, with a verdict expected on June 29.
The gate robbery happened on January 26, 2019, shortly after 4 a.m. Three masked men had cut the metal door supporting the work, taking it away in a white van with hidden plates, in eight minutes.
This disappearance had aroused “deep indignation”, in the words of the Bataclan team. This “symbol of meditation and belonging to all, residents, Parisians, citizens of the world, has been taken away from us”, she lamented.
The investigations had made it possible to find the metal door in June 2020 on a farm in Italy, without the plexiglass pane which protected it.
The prosecution depicted behind this theft a “structured organization” and saw in it a “scavenger behavior”; the defense described a gang of “nickel feet” not having measured the door’s memorial range.