French art thief given four years

Breitwieser was childish and anti-social, the court heard

Emma Jane Kirby BBC correspondent in Geneva

A Swiss court has sentenced a French art thief to four years in prison after he admitted stealing 69 works of art from museums and galleries across Switzerland.

Stephane Breitwieser, a 31-year-old waiter, told the court he was fascinated by the beauty of the works and had simply taken them home.

Mr Breitwieser, who is banned from returning to Switzerland for 15 years, will now have to stand trial in France as well.

He is accused there of stealing items worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Artefacts

The court in Bulle, western Switzerland, heard that Breitwieser was a childish and anti-social man with an over-inflated sense of his own importance.

Breitwieser was arrested in 2001 in Lucerne

He believed he was one of the very few people sensitive enough to appreciate the true beauty of works of art.

So over a six-year period he had simply removed precious artefacts from museums, stuffed them under his coat and taken them home.

Breitwieser was arrested in November 2001 near the Richard Wagner Museum in Lucerne.

Mother's rage

He insisted he had never tried to sell any of the treasures, but had stored them at his mother's house in eastern France.

He had reframed the oil paintings and arranged antique swords and ceramics in his bedroom.

Breitwieser will be returned to France for trial after serving his time in Switzerland.

His mother, Mireille, will also stand trial in France for destroying most of the collection.

In a fit of rage she threw most of the treasures into a canal and forced priceless oil paintings into her waste disposal unit.

According to press reports, some of the works she disposed of included paintings by Antoine Watteau and Peter Brueghel.