Matariya statue officials referred to speedy trail

CAIRO – 8 July 2017: Cairo's Administrative Prosecution ordered on Saturday a speedy trial for officials charged with committing violations regarding the process of extracting a recently-discovered statue from the mud in a Matariya slum late March.

The director of the Central Administration for Antiquities in Alexandria and Lower Egypt, the head of the Egyptian antiquities sector, the chairman of the Egyptian-German archaeological mission and the director of Archeology Department in Ain Shams and Matariya district are all defendants in the case.

“Using a heavy crane in digging up the statue was one of the major violations,” the prosecution report said, adding that “the statue was left uncovered and unattended for a long time allowing kids to mess with it.”

In March, two large, 3,000-year-old statues were discovered by local archeologists in the Matariya district in Cairo.

At the time, archaeologist and former antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass, who was present at the excavation, said it could be classified as an emergency extraction judging by the available facilities.