Maadi vessel smuggler to face charges

Javno

A U.S. Army helicopter pilot once stationed in Cairo will face charges of selling dozens of stolen Egyptian antiquities to a Texas art dealer, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Edward Johnson was arrested on Tuesday and is scheduled to appear in Alabama federal court on Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York said.

According to the complaint, Johnson was stationed in Cairo in September 2002, when 370 pre-dynastic artifacts were stolen from the Ma'adi Museum near Cairo.

In January 2003, Johnson contacted a Texas art dealer with a collection of Egyptian antiquities, the complaint said.

Johnson told the dealer, who is not named in the complaint, that his grandfather had acquired the antiquities in Egypt in the 1930s and 1940s, and that they had remained in the family.

The dealer purchased about 80 pieces for $20,000 and later consigned pieces from that collection to galleries and collectors in New York, London, Zurich, and Montreal.

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