Suspects taken into custody over Van Gogh theft

Egypt's senior culture ministry official, three guards at the Mahmoud Khalil Museum and a treasury official have been placed in custody.

Van Gogh's Poppy Flowers is valued at US$55 million.

CAIRO // Egypt's senior culture ministry official, three guards at the Mahmoud Khalil Museum and a treasury official were placed in custody for four days yesterday pending further investigations of Saturday's theft of a Vincent van Gogh painting, the state-owned Middle East News Agency (Mena) reported. Egypt also ordered 16 culture ministry employees not to travel while authorities try to find the painting valued at $55 million (Dh202m) and whoever stole it from the government-run museum where security was extraordinarily lax, Mena said.

"The search is ongoing. We still haven't found the painting," the culture minister, Faruq Hosni, said. "Police are on alert at the borders and the airports," he said, adding that the interior ministry had informed Interpol of the theft of the Dutch master's Poppy Flowers. Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, the prosecutor general, said that "only seven out of 43 security cameras were functioning" when the painting was taken.

"Even those seven were not functioning perfectly," Mr Mahmoud told reporters at the museum. "Each painting in the museum has an alarm. Not a single alarm for any painting is working." The robbers stood on a couch and cut the painting out of its frame, Mena reported. "The robber will not be able to sell the painting," Mr Hosnisaid in an interview withAl-Ahram daily, adding that the 63-by-57-centimetre canvas is too large to be easily concealed. The painting of the yellow and red flowers in a vase had been stolen from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum before, in 1977, but was found the following year.

The prosecutor ordered Mohsen Shaalan, the director of the ministry of culture's fine arts sector, and the four others held for questioning. Mr Hosni said over the weekend that two Italians had been detained at Cairo airport with the painting, but he later retracted the statement. He said the painting was still missing. Mr Hosni blamed Mr Shaalan for providing false information about the detention of thieves and the recovery of the painting.

"I received the news about the detention of the tourists with the painting from a radio station," Mr Shaalan told a TV station Saturday. The museum opened in 1995, but has been poorly maintained, he claimed. "The current security system is based more on human element [security personnel] as surveillance cameras are not as efficient as humans," he said. In an interview with a Saudi-owned station, Mr Hosni also blamed "security personnel at the museum who left to perform noon prayers".

The Van Gogh is one of 304 oil paintings and 50 sculptures in the three-storey museum, which houses original works by Monet, Renoir and Degas. The entire collection is worth an estimated $1.2 billion, according to a government website. "Egyptians have lost the ability to taste, express and feel," Amr Adeeb said Saturday night on his programme From Cairo on Orbit TV. "Egyptians don't deserve this painting as long as they haven't appreciated its value."

Adeeb demanded that all international paintings in the Egyptian museums be given to countries "who appreciate their value and know how to maintain them". Last year, nine historic paintings were stolen from Mohammed Ali Palace, but were later found. The Van Gogh painting was stolen "amid tight police control and claims that they know everything", columnist Wael Abdel Fattah wrote in Al-Dostor opposition daily yesterday. "Farouk Hosni knows that the robbery of the painting is an international disgrace."

@Email:[e-mail] * With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse