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June 2005 Greek statue stolen during WWII returned A 4-1/2 inch tall 2,600 year old bronze statue of a youth which was stolen from the island of Samos during World War II was turned over to the Greek Embassy in London by James Ede, a London -based art dealer who bought the piece from the widow of an art collector who lived in Switzerland. The dispatch, June 16, 2005
American archaeologist authenticates Afghanistan's recovered national treasures In the summer of 2003, the majority of the thousands of objects comprising the collection of the National Museum in Kabul which were presumed to have been stolen or destroyed during the Soviet occupation and the Taliban era were found safe in a vault in the presidential palace complex. They have since been authenticated by Fredrik Hiebert, an American archaeologist and specialist in ancient Bactrian cultures. Only one hundred objects have not been found. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 14, 2005
Thousands of stolen Iraqi artifacts found According to Donny George, Director of the National Museum of Iraq, about half of the 15,000 objects looted from the Museum in 2003 have been recovered. At least 1,000 were intercepted by U.S. Customs officials and more than 3,000 were found in Jordan, Syria, and Italy. The Museum is presently developing a database of artifacts which are still missing. The Washington Times, June 3, 2005
May 2005 Art Dealer Takes Greek Statue Back Home James Ede, a London art dealer who bought a tiny Greek provincial kouros in Switzerland, is returning it to the Samos Museum having established that it was taken from there sometime during the Second World War. The Guardian, May 28, 2005.
Artifacts Pilfered from Afghanistan Returned to Karzai Two Indo-Greek coins dating between 171 and 160 B.C. that had been looted from the Afghan National Museum some time after civil war broke out in 1989, were handed over to Afghan President Hamid Karzai during his visit to Washington, D.C. The coins were tracked down in the U.S. by the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement Team a few months after they surfaced in Pakistan. Pak Tribune, May 25, 2005
Italy Indicts Getty Museum Curator After a ten-year investigation, Marion True, a senior curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was indicted in Italy on criminal charges involving the receipt of stolen antiquities. The case involves forty objects acquired by the Getty Museum including a 5th century B.C. marble sculpture of Aphrpdite and a 2nd century B.C. marble figure of Tyche. The charges against Dr. True grew out of a case involving Italian art dealer Giacomo Medici and French art dealer Emanuele Robert Hecht. Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2005
Stolen Rare Artifact Recovered In Mail. Authorities Prevent Smuggling of Bar Kochba Era Artifact The Israeli Antiquities Authority searched the home of an antiquities expert after postal workers discovered a rare and valuable bronze weight dating to the Bar Kochba period (132 - 135 C.E.) hidden inside a hollowed out book that he was sending to an American antiquities dealer. In the apartment, they found documents implicating the expert in the smuggling of other rare artifacts. Jerusalem Post , May 17, 2005
April 2005 The First of Three Parts of the Famed Axum Obelisk Has Arrived Home in Ethiopia On April 19th, sixty-eight years after Italian troops acting on the orders of Benito Mussolini removed the Axum obelisk from Ethiopia and brought it to Rome, one-third of the 160 ton monument has been returned to Ethiopia. The other two parts of the 2,500 year-old, twenty-four meter high funeral stele will follow shortly. This ends years of unpleasantness between the two countries as the piece was supposed to have been returned immediately under the terms of a 1947 agreement. Australian Broadcasting Corporation , April 19, 2005
Antiques Smugglers Seized in Yemen At Hud, a team from the General Department of Antiquities investigating the smuggling of antiquities across the Yemeni-Saudi border arrested a three- man gang as it was trying to smuggle pre-Islamic art works out of Yemen. Big News Network , April 5, 2005 We thank the Museum Security Network Mailinglist and Cultural Property Protection Net Mailinglist for their work. |
