Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni announced, apparently yesterday, that antiquities dealer Ali Aboutaam had been arrested by Interpol in Bulgaria (Batoul Helmy, "Interpol arrests antiquities smuggler", Daily News January 15, 2009).
Readers of this blog will probably know that Aboutaam, who is Lebanese but currently resides in Geneva, Switzerland, was accused of being one of eight people involved in the case of Tarek El-Suesy (transliterated al-Seweissi in some accounts), arrested in 2003 for illegal export of Egyptian antiquities outside the country. He was alleged to have aided El-Suesy in smuggling a substantial number of Egyptian antiquities (labelled as glass utensils, children's toys and electronic appliances and then shipped under the name of a well-known export company). For his part in this operation, Aboutaam's case was tried in absentia in an Egyptian court in April 2004, and he was declared guilty and sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison and a fine of LE 50,000. Aboutaam had remained at large until his arrest.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said in a statement that Aboutaam's arrest was a "concrete step toward stopping the trade in illegal antiquities around the world".
What however is totally unclear is when this arrest took place, and where Mr Aboutaam currently is. Is he being held in Sofia? Is he being taken to Egypt to answer charges there? I found some rather surprising allegations on the museum security network which may be related to this for example. Is the public announcement now an attempt by Egypt to get some more concrete information from the Bulgarian government?
Perhaps more information will be available later.
Aboutaam was released after two weeks custody in Bulgaria and presently (Jan 15) is in Switzerland.
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