10 Egyptians are charged with smuggling antiquities

Ten Egyptians, including three top archeologists, will stand trial on charges of stealing and smuggling tens of thousands of antiquities, the nation’s chief prosecutor said Monday.

Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel Wahid also decided to send the chief of Pharaonic antiquities, Sabri Abdel Aziz, to a disciplinary tribunal on charges of negligence of duty, Egypt’s Middle East News Agency reported.

The officials were part of a gang the government accuses of stealing 57,000 artifacts from antiquity warehouses and smuggling thousands of them abroad.

The officials, appointed to protect Egypt’s antiquities, were arrested in January 2003 on suspicion of taking bribes to allow merchants to smuggle the treasures out of Egypt.

The arrests came after Cairo airport customs police discovered pieces from Egypt’s Pharaonic, Roman and Greek eras packed in a box for air shipping to a private dealer in Spain.

Egypt, which has long lamented the export of its antiquities, has recently been stepping up its efforts to stop trafficking of its treasures and get them back. The Supreme Council of Antiquities has issued a catalog of goods taken out of Egypt since 1970 and warned that the country will refuse to cooperate with museums that fail to return the antiquities.

The maximum sentence for receiving bribes is 15 years in prison with hard labor.