A Romanian art expert says she helped identify the suspects of a spectacular heist from a Dutch museum after she was asked to appraise two paintings in 2012.
Mariana Dragu of Romania's National Art Museum said she "felt she had to do something" when she realised the paintings were from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam.
A total of seven masterpieces including a Picasso, a Gauguin and two Monets were taken from the museum in October 2012.
The works are feared lost after the mother of the main suspect said she torched them to destroy evidence.
Dragu was asked in November to appraise two paintings, and she was met in a Bucharest flat by her friend and two other men, one of whom proved to be among the suspects of the robbery.
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"I had heard about the theft but I had not seen any images so I did not realise at once that it could have been the stolen paintings," she told Romanian daily Adevarul and Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad.
After examining the canvases - "Femme Devant une Fenetre Ouverte, dite La Fiancee" by Paul Gauguin and "La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune" by Henri Matisse - she discovered they were originals.
"I was told they came from England," she added, stressing that by then she had understood they were stolen.
Dragu told the men their "only chance to make some money was to hand them to the police, claiming they had found them in a garbage can".
She was allowed to take only one picture - the back of the Matisse, which carried several labels indicating it had been exhibited in several international displays.
When the Dutch police were told the paintings were in Romania "they could not believe it".
"But the picture I had taken was the best evidence that it was true."
Two months later, three suspects, including one of the two men she had met, were arrested in Romania.
Their trial begins on Tuesday.
