CAIRO – 28 June 2021: Egypt’s Public Prosecutor Hamada al-Sawy and his accompanying delegation, returned Cairo, Sunday with the 114 antiquities that had been looted and smuggled to France, ordering a technical team of the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry to check them.
In a statement, the Public Prosecution said its members supervised the completion of the procedures of shipping the looted artifacts.
The investigations began in 2019 when a French man informed the Egyptian Embassy in Paris that a French man, possessed these artifacts in his house after they were illegally brought into the country.
A French man and two Egyptians involved in the smuggling of the artifacts were arrested after cooperation with the French judicial authorities.
The artifacts, dating back to various eras of the Pharaonic history and Greek age, were smuggled out of Egypt and are not registered in the storehouses of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Sawy met his counterpart in Paris Catherine Ciamperino, Last week, as he praised cooperation between the Egyptian Public Prosecution and the French Judicial Authorities.
Attended at the meeting, Assistant Public Prosecutor of the Paris Court of Appeal and Director of the International Cooperation Department at the same court.
A high-level delegation from the Egyptian Public Prosecution also attended the meeting
Sawy pointed out that cooperation between Cairo and Paris is a model for cooperation between countries, stressing the need to find swift means of communication to exchange requests for cooperation and judicial assistance, and to facilitate the implementation of exchanged requests for judicial representation and share experiences and training programs to raise the efficiency and level of their staff.
The two sides exchanged views about the importance of fruitful judicial cooperation in light of their strong ties in various fields, including the field of combating various crimes, especially new and emerging forms of crime and organized and transnational crimes.
On Wednesday, Egypt’s Public Prosecutor Hamada al-Sawy announced retrieving, 114 looted antiquities that were smuggled to France, as part of the joint investigations launched by Egypt’s Prosecution and the French judicial authorities.
The joint investigations managed to stop all attempts for selling the Egyption smuggled antiquities.
Public Prosecutor Hamada al-Sawy arrived in Paris Tuesday in an official visit accompanied with Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri and Director of the General Administration of Recovered Antiquities.
The Recovered antiquities were transferred by France’s ministry of interior to Egypt’s embassy in France to be examined under the supervision of the Egyptian Public Prosecution in order to be transferred back to Cairo.
In a ceremony hosted by the Egyption embassy in France, Ambassador Alaa Yousef, praised the joint collaboration, and described it as an achievement added to the record of the Egyptian-French bilateral relations.
Yousef noted in his speech that the two countries relations have been strengthened in several areas over recent years.
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