The British government will return nearly 5,000 stolen artifacts to Iraq, the office of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said Friday. Kadhimi, who was appointed premier in May, arrived in the United Kingdom earlier this week for an official state visit. During a tour of the British Museum in London, the Iraqi leader was briefed on the UK's pledge to return clay tablets and other artifacts to Iran. They are expected to be delivered next year, in what Kadhimi's office said is Iraq’s largest-yet repatriation of looted artifacts. Included in the repatriation 4,000-year-old Sumerian relic that museum experts discovered for sale by an online auctioneer in May 2019. The limestone sculpture is believed to have been taken from a temple in Iraq that was heavily looted during the Gulf War and again in 2003.
OK, we know about the relief that an Essex auction house was trying to flog off. Where are the other 4999 seized artefacts from, what are they and who was selling them? And how many arrests have been made in the UK as a result of the in-depth investigations of this crime? Somehow that seems to be missing from this text. How deeply involved are British dealers in the trade of conflict antiquities from this and other Middle Easter countries, and why are we not being told anything at all about this? Repatriation of loose smuggled artefacts should be the end of the process, not its aim.
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