The Bibliotheca Alexandrina announced, (Sunday), that it had obtained the diplomatic passport of the late Egyptian President Mohamed Anwar Sadat, more than a month after his photos were circulated through an American auction house, in preparation for selling it.
The director of the library, Ahmed Zayed, did not reveal, in an interview with journalists, how to obtain the passport or return it to Egypt, saying only that "the Egyptian state apparatus recovered it from abroad, at a speed beyond any imagination."
He added, "Given the Egyptian state's confidence in the Library of Alexandria and its role in preserving the heritage of the homeland and its people, it was directed to include the recovered passport in the collection of the late president's holdings in the library, and to display it in an appropriate museum display befitting the presidents of Egypt."
According to a photo distributed by the library, this passport expired on March 18, 1979, before it was renewed until March 18, 1981. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina had allocated an area of 260 square meters inside it for the establishment of the Sadat Museum in 2009, to include a collection of medals, medals, clothes, pictures, and personal belongings.
The library denied earlier receiving the passport offered for sale in the United States, or any other passport belonging to Sadat, among the holdings handed over by the late president's family to be placed in the museum.
The library (Sunday) also displayed a group of new holdings that it included for the first time in the Sadat Museum on the occasion of the celebration of the victory anniversary of the 10th of Ramadan 1973.
Among these holdings is a medal from Israel issued on the occasion of the signing of the peace treaty in 1979, a commemorative medal from Egyptian scholars in Italy to Sadat on the occasion of his visit to that European country in 1976, and the commemorative key to the city of Arish on the occasion of the return of Arish to Egyptian sovereignty in 1979.
Okaz (Cairo)