Looting in Iraq was work of organised traffickers: UNESCO

PARIS (AFP) Apr 17, 2003
Much of the looting of archaeological treasures at Iraq's national museum was carried out by organised gangs who traffic in works of ancient art, according to experts at a United Nations meeting called on Thursday to discuss the damage caused by the war to the country's cultural heritage.

"It looks as if at least part of the theft was a very deliberate, planned action," said McGuire Gibson, president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad.

"Probably (it was done) by the same sorts of gangs that have been paying for the destruction of sites in Iraq over the last 12 years and the smuggling out of these objects into the international market," he said.

Looters sacked the National Archaeological Museum in Baghdad last Friday, removing or destroying thousands of artefacts and provoking widespread criticism of the US occupying army for failing to take steps to protect the building.

Among the items Gibson said were known to have been lost was a collection of around 80,000 cuneiform tablets that contain examples of the some of the world's earliest writing.

He was speaking after a meeting of 30 experts at the Paris headquarters of the UN's cultural organisation UNESCO, organised to take preliminary stock of the damage to Iraq's cultural wealth, recommend ways of safeguarding what remains and act to stop pillaged items reaching the world's art market.

SPACE.WIRE