Investigations into the theft in Ancient Olympia still in the dark

The police investigation relating to the two armed robbers who invaded the old museum of Ancient Olympia are now moving along three lines. Given that so far nothing usable has been found from the thorough search by specialist officers and staff of the Attica Security Division, and the staff from the laboratories of the Division of Criminal Investigation, the ivestiagtion is literally moving in the dark. These three lines are:

    * the identification of the vehicle and the escape route followed by the perpetrators. "If we find their car, then we will have something in our hands. It will probably be stolen and thus we will know where it was stolen, how, and of course where the robbers started the execution of their plan," a police official said. It is also expected that the car will contain usable genetic material (DNA)
    * monitoring and evaluation of all the clues given by citizens on the 2 phone lines provided to the public by the Police. But this part too has not yielded any important clues so far
    * analysis of all telephone calls made from 7 am last Friday until 8 on the same day. In the past, such analyses have provided evidence in very serious cases, but it is a very lengthy process
 
In an effort to identify common features with the robbery in Olympia, police officers pulled old robbery cases from the files, a process that takes time and gives the advantage to the robbers to erase all traces.

A senior official of the ministry of Citizen Protection says the identification and arrest of the museum robbers should be effected immediately, because otherwise the incident will whet the appetite of criminal organizations and illicit antiquities networks from the entire planet, and put our museums and archaeological sites under attack.

Lastly, among the 65 items removed from the five cases was a golden ring-seal of the Mycenaean era from Antheia in Messinia, bearing a bull-leaping scene. Also stolen was a bronze figurine of a runner, which was to travel to Germany for the great exhibition "Olympia: Myth and Ritual" that will open in the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin next August.