BBC News Online: World: Middle East

Gravedigger caught selling skeletons

Egyptian police are reported to have arrested a gravedigger for selling skeletons to medical students.

The gravedigger is said to have confessed after two sacks full of human skulls and bones were found in his home.

It is not clear what alerted police to what is reported to have been, almost literally, the skeleton in the gravedigger's closet.

Although Islam prohibits tampering with a body after death, Egypt's tough economic conditions have given rise to a black-market trade in skeletons.

They are sold to students at overstretched medical facilities, where crowded classes mean that would-be doctors fear they will not have the hands-on experience of the human body they need without the illegally procured remains.

Grave-robbing is enough of a phenomenon to have been depicted in Egyptian films - but arrests are relatively rare.