CAIRO — Egypt's Public Prosecution announced on Dec. 20 that Egypt recovered 36 artifacts from Madrid that had been smuggled to Spain in 2014.

The Public Prosecution wrote in a Facebook post on Dec. 20 that the Egypt-Spain judicial cooperation to combat this type of transnational crime resulted in the recovery of artifacts. This is also “an implementation of the UN resolution that was issued based on a proposal submitted by the Egyptian Public Prosecution at the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in October 2020. It is also an implementation of the Egyptian Public Prosecution's plan to have an international instrument for the recovery of looted Egyptian artifacts as part of the Egyptian state’s strategy to preserve its history and resources.”

The Egyptian Public Prosecution stated that its investigations into this case began in June 2014 “when the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs received correspondence from the Spanish authorities about seizing 36 Egyptian artifacts from Alexandria in the port of Valencia. The Public Prosecution’s investigation resulted in identifying six defendants … who were brought before the court on charges of smuggling antiquities and forging and using official documents. The court sentenced them to prison.”

Magdy Shaker, the chief archaeologist at the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, told Al-Monitor, “The handover of the artifacts that had been smuggled to Spain came after a major and joint effort by the Egyptian ministries of Foreign Affairs and Tourism and Antiquities, in cooperation with the Egyptian Public Prosecution and the judicial authorities in Madrid. Those artifacts were smuggled in a container, the suspects in this crime had been arrested, and all papers proving Egypt's eligibility for these artifacts were submitted.”