According to the official statement of the prosecution, this handover was “the fruit of effective judicial cooperation between the two countries, in order to preserve the Egyptian historical heritage.”
The statement added that the delivery “was in implementation of the UN resolution issued based on the project submitted by the Egyptian Public Prosecution at the Conference of the States Parties to Combat Transnational Organized Crime in October 2020, in implementation of the Egyptian Public Prosecution’s plan to issue an international instrument to retrieve the looted Egyptian artifacts, within the framework of the Egyptian state’s strategy preserving its history and capabilities.
The Public Prosecution revealed the scenes of the recovery procedures, after the delegation of the Egyptian Public Prosecution, accompanied by the Egyptian ambassador to the Kingdom of Spain, moved to the National Heritage Museum in Madrid, where the delegation met the director of the museum and a number of officials of the Spanish authorities.
The delegation of the Egyptian Prosecution inspected the seized antiquities, and compared them to the pictures sent by the Spanish authorities, previously examined by the Recovered Antiquities Department of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The delegation recovered the pieces after making sure that they matched the photos.
The delegation will supervise the procedures for packaging and shipping the recovered antiquities to Egypt, in preparation for handing them over to the officials of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities in Cairo.
Seizures story
It is worth noting that the Public Prosecution’s investigations began in June 2014, with letters from the Spanish authorities to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, seizing 36 Egyptian artifacts in the port of Valencia in the Spanish Kingdom, which came from Alexandria.
After this address, the Egyptian Public Prosecution began investigations, which concluded with the participation of 6 defendants, one of whom is the owner of an import and export office in Alexandria, in smuggling the seized pieces to Spain, and forging documents related to the export of containers that included smuggled Egyptian antiquities.
The investigations ended with bringing the six defendants to criminal trial, accusing them of smuggling antiquities abroad, forging official documents and using them, and the court sentenced them to prison terms.
As part of the prosecution’s investigation into the incident, the Department of International Cooperation in the Public Prosecutor’s Office sent requests for international judicial delegation to the Spanish authorities, to seize the antiquities and return them to Egypt.
It also followed up on the legal measures taken in Spain, until a ruling was issued by the Spanish judiciary to hand over the looted artifacts to the Egyptian authorities, after which the Egyptian Public Prosecutor assigned the Public Prosecution delegation to move to inspect and receive the aforementioned artifacts.
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