The highlight of the crime scene this week was the arrest of a gang specialized in stealing corpses from the Bab Al-Wazir graveyard in Old Cairo.
Arabic dailies reported that, while driving past on Salah Salem Road, a police night patrol spotted a man beckoning to a truck to turn into the alley leading to the graveyard. They then saw three men carrying big sacks, obviously filled with bones and corpses. Upon confronting them, the three escaped. The driver, however, was arrested and guided the police to his accomplices' hiding places. The gang’s leaders Usama Mahmoud (50) and Essam Salah (21), both unemployed, masterminded the robbery of the graves, using the skill of Essam, a former grave-digger and the help of a trio: Ahmed Abdel Aziz (41), a truck driver; Ashraf, a Qasr Al-Aini nurse; and Farouk Al-Ashry, a junk dealer.
Upon their arrest, all confessed to have been conspiring to steal corpses and remains for the last three months with the aim of selling them to medical students and specialists for experimentation. They were reported to have opened 21 graves and sold their contents in two other such robberies. But they were caught red-handed the third time as they tried to walk away with 50 skulls and other types of remains.
Their interest in robbing graves was aroused when a father of a medical student complained to the three of them that he was finding difficulty trying to get a skull for his son. Having managed to steal 10 skulls, the unemployed duo and their accomplice the truck driver had to face the problem of selling the items. But one of them had connections with the junk dealer. T he junk dealer helped them through his link with the nurse who offered to treat the skulls with formaldehyde and sell them to medical students...
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic