As wrangling continues in the wake of the theft of Egypt's only Van Gogh, Nevine El-Aref wonders what the trial of the head of the Fine Arts Section and 10 other officials at the Ministry of Culture will reveal The trial of Mohsen Shaalan and 10 other senior officials at the Ministry of Culture, who face charges of negligence and professional delinquency following the theft of a Van Gogh painting, estimated to be worth $55 million, from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, has been postponed to 28 September. The delay was requested by the defence team to allow them more time to summon witnesses. Investigations into the theft of the Van Gogh, which was on permanent show at the museum, have shown that only seven of the museum's 43 surveillance cameras were functioning, and none of the alarms attached to the museum's paintings were working. Shaalan, who as deputy minister of culture for fine arts was in charge of the museum's financial and administrative affairs, is being held responsible for the security lapses that led to the theft. The theft has continued to make headlines, with Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and Shaalan exchanging accusations in a very public, and increasingly unseemly, squabble. Following his detention Shaalan wrote a letter to Al-Masry Al-Yom newspaper in which he said he had inherited a fast deteriorating department on being appointed head of the Fine Arts Sector four years ago. "The museums affiliated to the sector were in desperate need of restoration and maintenance... many projects were only half completed owing to budgetary restraints and sloppy administration," wrote Shaalan. Since 2006, says Shaalan, he has informed the Ministry of Culture on several occasions of security problems at the Mahmoud Khalil Museum only to be told there was no budget to address the situation and that it was low priority. Hosni responded to Shaalan's claims by telling Al-Ahram Weekly that, "Shaalan initially asked the Ministry of Economic Development for money to upgrade security and not the Ministry of Culture". "I advised Shaalan to develop the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, which was officially inaugurated in 1995, and allocated LE40 million from the Cultural Development Fund [CDF] to upgrade all the museums that fall under the Fine Art Sector." During a press conference arranged by the ministry to display 80 Ottoman manuscripts -- the Al-Ghouri Cache -- and dispel rumours that they, too, were missing, Hosni was questioned about the missing Van Gogh. He insisted that the ministry had not accused Shaalan of anything "but he accused himself" and that it was up to the trial to apportion blame. He also argued that the loss of the painting should not be seen as the end of the world. "Last May four paintings, among them a Picasso and Matisse, were stolen from the Paris Museum of Modern Art," he pointed out. "Several countries have lost major artworks. It does not mean that museums in Egypt are in a bad condition," Hosni told reporters. He also stressed that when the Mahmoud Khalil Museum was inaugurated in 1995 it was equipped with an up-to-date security system that it was the museum administration's job to maintain. "Repairing the surveillance cameras and alarms only cost LE100,000," he said. Meanwhile, 100 Egyptian intellectuals, including best-selling novelist Alaa El-Aswani and writer Belal Fadl, signed a letter published in Al-Shorouq newspaper demanding Hosni's dismissal. "It is ridiculous for a single person to have held Egypt's culture portfolio for more than 23 years," they said. Hosni described the signatories as "neither intellectuals nor, apart from five, members of the Egyptian Writers' Union". "None of those who signed the letter has made any contribution to Egyptian culture," Hosni railed.
