(via Command Post) EFL
| Comes as a surprise, doesn't it? Toldja so! Toldja so! |
Some of the looters who ravaged Iraqi antiquities appeared highly organized and even had keys to museum vaults and were able to take pieces from safes, experts said Thursday at an international meeting.
So, how do we know it happened after the fall of Baghdad?
One expert said he suspected the looting was organized outside the country.
I doubt that is anything more than deflecting accusations to non-Iraqis
The U.N. cultural agency gathered some 30 art experts and cultural historians in Paris on Thursday to assess the damage to Iraqi museums and libraries looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion.
| A few internationally renowned detectives would prob'ly have been more to the point... |
Although much of the looting was haphazard, experts said some of the thieves clearly knew what they were looking for and where to find it, suggesting they were prepared professionals.
Duh!... Abdul on the street generally wasn't even allowed in the museums
| He wasn't. Admission to the museum was restricted... |
"It looks as if part of the looting was a deliberate planned action," said McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "They were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important Mesopotamian materials put in safes. I have a suspicion it was organized outside the country, in fact I'm pretty sure it was." He added that if a good police team was put together, "I think it could be cracked in no time."
Cultural experts, curators and law enforcement officials are scrambling to both track down the missing antiquities and prevent further looting of the valuables. The pillaging has ravaged the irreplaceable Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections that chronicled ancient civilization in Mesopotamia, and the losses have triggered an impassioned outcry in cultural circles.
| The numbers say it wasn't done overnight, too... |
Many fear the stolen artifacts have been absorbed into highly organized trafficking rings that ferry the goods through a series of middlemen to collectors in Europe, the United States and Japan. Officials at the UNESCO meeting at its headquarters in Paris said the information was still too sketchy to determine exactly what was missing and how many items were unaccounted for.
| Because the "looters" burned all the records they could... |
The experts, which included Iraqi art officials, said some of the most valuable pieces had been placed in the vault of the national bank after the 1991 Gulf War, but they had no information on whether the items were still there.
"Gone! They're gone! We are so surpised!"
That's why the call these countries "kleptocracies," isn't it? |
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