Jordan seizes alleged Iraqi paintings

[thedrifter]

Jordan seizes alleged Iraqi paintings
42 works of art believed looted from Baghdad museum


MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS


April 19 ? Jordanian customs authorities have seized 42 paintings believed to have been looted from Iraq?s National Museum, government officials said Saturday. The seizure came one day after the international police organization Interpol announced it would send a special team to Iraq to help track down pillaged art treasures, prompting some Baghdad residents to return 20 looted pieces.
BORDER OFFICIALS SEIZED the paintings earlier this week from unidentified people entering Jordan from Iraq?s western desert, officials familiar with the matter said, confirming a newspaper report. It wasn?t clear what action had been taken against the alleged smugglers.
The artwork was sent to Jordan?s main Customs Department in Amman, where it was being verified for authenticity, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Preliminary checks indicated it had been looted from Iraq, they said.
Officials at Jordan?s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, usually responsible for investigating such matters, were not immediately available for comment.
Ad-Dustour, Jordan?s second-largest daily newspaper, broke the news Saturday with a short article quoting Mahmoud Qteishat, director general of Jordan?s Customs Department.



Qteishat said he has instructed customs officers to ?take all necessary measures to confiscate any stolen items? from the Iraqi museum and library, which were looted last week.
The al-Karameh border post, where the paintings were seized, has served as a lifeline for shipments of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies since sweeping U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It has also been a point of entry for passengers embarking on the 12-hour drive to Baghdad.

BAGHDAD RESIDENTS RETURN 20 PIECES
On Friday, some Baghdad residents returned 20 pieces from Iraq?s ransacked national collection.





Baghdad?s Muslim clerics, encouraged by museum operators, had urged the faithful to return works.
The returned works included pottery and metal pieces. ?It was their conscience that made them bring that stuff back,? said Jabar Hilil, Iraq?s antiquities chief.
Interpol said it planned a special gathering May 5-6 to devise strategies for recovering the thousands of objects stolen from Baghdad?s Iraq National Museum and other institutions nationwide. The meeting is to bring together officials from UNESCO, the International Council of Museums and the World Customs Organization, among others.

PROFESSIONAL THIEVES LIKELY INVOLVED
While the pillage at first appeared to be a spontaneous frenzy unleashed by the fall of Baghdad, experts now believe some looters were highly organized professionals aiming to feed clandestine networks. Officials also said the most likely markets for the stolen goods to appear are Switzerland, the United States, Israel and Japan. Officials have said professional thieves likely targeted some of the pieces.
Gary Vikan, a Maryland museum director who resigned from a White House cultural committee because of art looting in Iraq, said Friday the international community should try to buy back the stolen treasures.
?The people in the neighborhood with these objects should be rewarded for bringing them back. That creates a bad precedent, I know, but these are unusual circumstances,? said Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Earlier, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said, ?We have offered rewards ... for individuals who may have taken items from the museum to bring those back.?
The Interpol statement said a special team of senior officers would go to Kuwait and other countries in the region later this month seeking information from governments and police on what had been stolen.
?The team will travel to Iraq as soon as this can be arranged with military officials,? the statement said.
Interpol has already alerted police in its 181 member countries to make sure that everyone from border guards to art dealers and even the public is aware of the situation, the statement added.
Antiquities experts worldwide have also called on U.S. and British forces to guard Iraq?s cultural sites, saying they had not done enough to stop organized criminal gangs that were already selling priceless Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections on the black market.
Thirty art experts and cultural historians have been assembled by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to assess the damage to Iraq?s heritage in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion. Delegates at a UNESCO meeting in Paris urged the United Nations on Thursday to step in and impose an embargo on the acquisition of Iraqi cultural objects and to set up ?heritage police? to prevent further looting of Iraq?s antiquities.
Three members of the President?s Advisory Committee on Cultural Property, meanwhile, resigned in protest this week over the failure of U.S. forces to prevent the pillaging. Viken and Martin Sullivan, chairman of the panel for eight years, charged that the U.S. military had advance warning of the danger to Iraq?s historical treasures but chose to do nothing. Member Richard S. Lanier also resigned. All three had been appointed during the Clinton administration.
?We certainly know the value of oil, but we certainly don?t know the value of historical artifacts,? Vikan said.
Sullivan wrote in his letter of resignation: ?While our military forces have displayed extraordinary precision and restraint in deploying arms ? and apparently in securing the Oil Ministry and oil fields ? they have been nothing short of impotent in failing to attend to the protection of [Iraq?s] cultural heritage.?
He called the destruction of the National Museum both ?wanton and preventable.?

STUNNING LOSS
By all accounts, the Iraqi collections were stunning.
Modern-day Iraq is home to ancient Mesopotamia, which is considered the cradle of civilization. Iraqi museum and library collections chronicled and illustrated the flowering of ancient cultures, as well as Baghdad?s later role as an Islamic center.
?These are items that historians look at to figure out how we began, how we became civilized,? Gordon Newby, chairman of Middle Eastern Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, told NBC News.
Western archeologists have specifically called the National Museum of Antiquities one of the 10 most important museums in the world. More than 100,000 objects ? representing one of the world?s greatest collections of Mesopotamian artifacts ? are believed to have been stolen or damaged.
Iraq?s National Library and the country?s main Islamic library were also looted and burned, and the museum in the northern city of Mosul was ransacked.
A preliminary survey provided a limited indication of the types of treasures missing or destroyed: a four-millennia-old copper head of an Akkadian king, golden bowls, imposing statues and ancient manuscripts. Some items are so well known, The Washington Post reported Friday, that ?no collector would dare let it be known that he or she had them.? The alabaster Uruk Vase, for example, which dates from around 3500 B.C., is pictured in introductory art history text, the Post said.
Such items would be highly prized in the underground antiquities market, which stretches from local bands of looters to larger gangs and networks often linked to drug trafficking. That market, experts say, may already be making offers on priceless Iraqi treasures.
Looted goods typically are smuggled across borders and change hands many times, making their origins murky by the time they make it to dealers and auctioneers in Europe, the United States and Japan. From Iraq, experts say, antiquities traders will probably smuggle the stolen objects to Turkey, Jordan or Syria, taking deliberately circuitous journeys on the way to collectors? homes or exclusive galleries in New York, London and Tokyo.


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NBC?s Jim Maceda in Baghdad and Betsy Steuart in Washington, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report


Sempers,

Roger