CAIRO - A Cairo court Tuesday sentenced a deputy minister of culture and ten others to three years in jail for negligence that led to the theft of a painting worth $55 million from an Egyptian museum in August.
"Mohssen Shaalan, the assistant minister of culture and head of the fine arts sector, is jailed for three years and fined LE10,000 ($1,800) for fatal negligence that led to the theft of van Gogh's Poppy Flowers painting," a judicial source said.
He added that ten other officials including guards were also charged with three years imprisonment.
Vincent Van Gogh's "Poppy Flowers," also known as "Vase with Flowers" was stolen on August 22 in a brazen daytime heist in a case that highlighted major security lapses in cultural institutions.
Tuesday's session was very heated as Shaalan's lawyer insisted that Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni should be questioned by the court for allegedly being part of the negligence in Egyptian museums.
Among the charged officials are Reem Bahira, the manager of the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum, where the painting was stolen.
An Egyptian business man had said that he would reward anyone who provided information about the painting with LE1 million. However, no word was heard about it to the moment, according to a security official.
The Dutch masterpiece, valued at more than 50 million dollars, was cut out of its frame. Official investigations found that the museum had reduced the number of guards and that most of the surveillance cameras were not working.
Public prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud has said that each painting in the Mahmud Khalil Museum, which also has works by Monet and Renoir, had an alarm but that none of them worked.
The painting, of yellow and red flowers in a vase, had been stolen before in 1977, but was recovered the following year.
