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Newsletter archive |
Success stories December 2004 Antique tablet stolen from Yemen a decade ago is returned An alabaster plaque dating to ca. 350 A.D. which had been stolen from the Aden Museum in July 1994 was turned over to the Ambassador of the Republic of Yeman by U.S. officials. The plaque had been consigned for sale at Sotheby's in 2001 by Phoenix Ancient Art S.A. whose owners claimed that it came from a private collection in England. After sotheby's experts working with ICE agents determined that it belonged to the Museum, U.S. officials seized the plaque. New York Times, December 15, 2004 DHS, December 1, 2004 
Egyptian archaeologists face smuggling trial A gang of Egyptians that included three top government archaeologists has been charged with stealing 57,000 antiquities and smuggling thousands of them abroad. The gang was arrested in January 2003 when customs police at the Cairo airport discovered that a box of antiquities packed for shipment to a private dealer in Spain was accompanied by a certificate from the Supreme Council of Antiquities identifying the pieces as modern replicas. Associated Press, December 13, 2004
Ancient gold mask to be returned to Peru A Sican gold mask representing the sea god Naylamp that was taken out of Peru in the 1960s or 1970s was turned over to the Italian police by its present owner and will be returned to Peru shortly. Reuters [Photo], December 10, 2004
November 2004 Iranian police break up smuggling ring Iranian police in the province of Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari arrested thirty-six people who were part of an antiquities smuggling ring and recovered more than 940 stolen artifacts including gold and silver coins, figurines, vases, mirrors and inscribed tablets. Reuters, November 30, 2004
Indian police seize stolen antiquities The Varanasi police arrested six men as they were trying to sell three one-thousand year old cast silver statues worth millions of rupees. The final destination of the statues was to have been the international art market. India News, November 29, 2004
Scholar gets house arrest in Iraq looting An expert on Iraq's postwar reconstruction was sentenced Monday to six months under house arrest and two years of probation for trying to smuggle into the United States 4,000-year-old artifacts stolen from Iraq's national museum in the chaos after the U.S. invasion. Joseph Braude, 29, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Allyne Ross in August to smuggling and making false statements. Braude could have gotten 16 years in prison. Braude is a Middle East expert fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi. For years he had assisted the FBI and CIA with counterterrorism efforts. When he returned from Iraq last summer, Braude was stopped by customs agents at Kennedy Airport after he failed to declare he was carrying three ancient marble and alabaster seals. He also briefly denied that he had been to Iraq. The seals had been stolen from the Iraqi National Museum during widespread post-invasion looting. Customs agents said Braude admitted during questioning that he bought the seals, dating back four millennia to Iraq's Akkadian period, from a black marketeer. Braude, the descendant of a prominent family of Iraqi Jews, studied Near Eastern languages at Yale University and Arabic and Islamic history at Princeton University. He published "The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for Its People, the Middle East and the World" last year. The Guardian, November 22, 2004
70 antiques returned to Iraq's Nasiriyah museum Police in Iraq's southern city of Nasiriyah, some 350 km south of Baghdad, retrieved 70 stolen antiques and gave them back to the city's museum, local newspaper Al Sabah reported on Monday. Nasiriyah's antiquity protection police force, which was established to prevent the smuggling of the ruins and antiques, managed to seize the stolen antiques of the ancient times in the regions of Oma and Jokha with the help of the Italian police, said the report. China View, November 22, 2004
October 2004 Priceless Antiquities Return to Egypt Egyptian authorities flew 617 priceless antiquities home from Britain, four years after they were stolen and smuggled out. The antiquities include two wooden pharaonic coffins covered in hieroglyphics, as well as amulets and pots from the Greek era. Egypt has long battled smuggling and corruption and has in recent years stepped up efforts to curb the crimes. Scotsman, Octobert 17, 2004
Six Iraqi artefacts seized in Jordan are believed to have been stolen from Iraqi museums at the Karama border. The objects include a winged bull and a half-man, half-lion statue, dated to 1500 B.C.E. and were found hidden in a car driven by an Iraqi man as he tried to enter Jordan. Some of the objects had metal identification plates and could have been stolen from Iraqi museums, Qteishat said on Sunday. Jordanian authorities say more than 1500 pieces of antiquities have been seized at the country's border with Iraq and they are being kept for safekeeping. Al Jazeera, October 3, 2004 We thank the Museum Security Network Mailinglist and Cultural Property Protection Net Mailinglist for their work. |
