Cairo, Jan 21, 2020 – A Cairo criminal court sentenced a former honorary Italian consul to 15 years in jail in absentia on Tuesday for smuggling antiquities out of the country, a judicial source said. Italian police found the sizeable loot in a diplomatic shipping container heading from the port city of Alexandria to Salerno in Italy in 2017. Egypt managed to retrieve the stolen antiquities in cooperation with Italian authorities in 2018. Last year, a stolen golden coffin of a Pharaonic priest was unveiled in Cairo after authorities managed to retrieve it from New York. Antiquities smuggling had thrived in the tumult that followed the 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak.

Source: The North Africa Journal January 22, 2020 13:41 UTC