Egypt Arrests Two Over Missing Pharaonic Statues

Cairo (Egypt):
Egyptian police arrested two men on Saturday in connection with the disappearance of three 3000-year-old Pharaonic statues from the basement of the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo.
Police captured the men, both of them employees of a company contracted to do restoration work in the museum, in a sting operation with officers presenting themselves as antiquities dealers.
The statues, one representing a man and his wife side by side, another the head of the royal guard and the third an unknown character, vanished from the museum last month under mysterious circumstances.
Police said that the suspects smuggled the artifacts out of the building in bags that they used to remove rubble from the basement of the museum, which explained why they were not searched at the gates.
The arrests men came just days after culture minister Farouk Hosni ordered a probe into reports about damage to another Pharaonic statue, also during restoration work at the museum. Oct 10, 2005
Middle East Times