Two horrifying incidents of infanticide make the news; antiquity theft publicized This week drug-related stories take the lion's share of coverage in the local crime scene with police taking on drug-traffickers and busting gangs. Al-Ahram daily reported Wednesday that the anti-narcotics department, in cooperation with the armed forces, air force, border guards and the police corps of Sinai, Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, confiscated 36 acres planted with bango and opium as well as three tons of dry bango and half a ton of hashish in Sinai. This is the second such raid aimed at thwarting drug trafficking. The raid included the efforts of 70 police officers, 500 conscripts and some 200 civil servants belonging to different local security apparatuses. Chief of the anti-narcotics department, Brigadier-General Ahmed Samack told Al-Ahram that three months of preparations had preceded the raid. At the time, the plants were still seedlings, making it difficult to take any action. But the department kept watch over the field until it was time to attack. Earlier this week, drug dealers were delivered another severe blow when two smugglers were trapped by police and arrested after a long chase in the desert skirting Salam City, reported Al-Gomhuriah daily. The culprits, two of the biggest narcotics traders in Zerzara, Qasaseen and Ismailia, used to store their contraband in the mountainous surroundings that embrace the residential area of Salam City. The traffickers, Udaa Muslih (25) and Ali Salama Seliman (age not specified) were arrested before they could fire at the police forces with their guns. Some 80 kg of bango, 20 pieces of raw hashish and half a kilogram of heroin as well as LE 600 they had earned from sales were recovered from their bags. Two days earlier, Al-Akhbar newspaper reported Cairo police had arrested one of the biggest bango dealers in the capital - a young fellow only 20 years of age. Two cases involving infanticide came to the limelight in the daily press this week. The first took place when a woman strangled her sister's months-old son, killing her after the latter went shopping leaving the babe in the sister's care. By the time the baby's mother came back she found her sister screaming and pointing at the infant's bed. A police investigation revealed that the woman had been traumatized by her husband's recent death due to failed heart surgery, leaving her virtually penniless. Al-Akhbar also reported that a child's body was found inside a briefcase that had been dumped in one of the trash containers in Ain Shams. Investigations revealed that the child, a two-year-old girl, belonged to a Sudanese woman who had left her with her husband. But exasperated by her continuous crying, he kicked her several times, ramming her head against the metal railing of a bed until she died. The woman who worked as a maid in Nasr City used to leave her two children in her husband's care and returned to see them every week. Antiquity related robberies also have a share in this week's scene with the attention-grabbing arrest of some gang members who were caught with a number of statues and amulets belonging to different eras as well as a Quran inscribed with gold paint dating to the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutassam's reign. The Quran was found in a butcher's shop in Diyarb Negm, Sharqeya. Egyptian antiquity officials remarked that the Quran was a rare piece and demanded it be deposited in one of the museums. In addition, some 300 amulets and incense burners, all dating to ancient Egyptian periods, were recovered by police in Assiut and Beni Suef in two different cases involving farmers who had managed to lay hands on the artifacts by digging a tunnel to connect their houses with the archaeological sites that sheltered the antiquities. The statues, Pharaonic, Roman and Greek, were retrieved from a grocer's shop in Minya.
