Sudanese General Intelligence agents were able to uncover and thwart a crime that it described as “shaking cultural circles in the local and international communities.”
The website quoted the (Al-Mashhad Al-Sudani)”, the intelligence service, a statement in which stated that they “stopped at the border with the State of South Sudan, two trucks of the model “Land Cruise pickup” carrying historical monuments stolen by the Rapid Support Forces from the National Museum in Khartoum,” according to the site.
Sudanese intelligence explained that its elements “arrested a Sudanese citizen active in the trade of looted antiquities, and in connection with that crime, which shook cultural circles in the local and international communities,” as it put it.
The Sudanese Minister of Culture and Information, Chairman of the Committee for the Protection and Security of Museum Collections and Archaeological Sites, Graham Abdel Qader, spoke about the incident, revealing that “the General Intelligence Service monitored and obtained audio and video recordings of the movement of the trucks concerned to the State of South Sudan, and tracked them until they stopped them and arrested the main element coordinating the theft.”
Graham added that “the parties to the crime of stealing Sudanese antiquities set the prices of antiquities for buyers on the other side,” according to the monitored recordings, according to the minister.
The minister added: “The fall of the antiquities thief in the hands of the security services will reveal the threads that lead to the rest of the criminals, whether countries, entities or individuals. This is a heinous crime added to the black sheet record of the RSF rebels,” he said, according to al-Sudani newspaper.
Earlier, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), commander of the Rapid Support Forces, stressed last Thursday that “the war in Sudan has never been an option for the RSF,” stressing his forces’ commitment to “peace and democratic civilian rule led by real democratic forces from all regions of Sudan, especially women, youth and marginalized areas.”
In a statement published on his account on the “X” platform, Dagalo welcomed “high-level international attention on the Sudanese crisis, which was reflected in statements issued by the meeting of the African Peace and Security Council and US President Joe Biden,” and this is the first time that Biden has spoken, publicly, about the catastrophic situation in Sudan, since the outbreak of the war.
