More than 188K antiquities looted from Syria, Yemen to fund terrorist crimes over decade: Report

A total of 188,635 artifacts were looted from museums in Yemen and Iraq over the past ten years, in addition to thousands of other antiquities pillaged from Libya and Iraq, to be sold to generate money for terrorist groups in the Middle East, said a report issued by the Docket of the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) on Wednesday.

Since smuggling antiquities is closely related to financing terrorism as a vital source of income for terrorist groups, especially in the war-stricken countries of the Middle East like Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, the CFJ called for prosecuting those who are involved in terrorism-related crime.

“In Syria, tens of thousands of items have been pillaged from archaeological sites, and at least 40,635 items have been looted from museums […] In Yemen, ongoing pillage has targeted major museums and archeological sites, including an estimated 12,000 items looted from the Dhamar Museum, 16,000 items from the Military Museum in Sana’a, and 120,000 items from the National Museum in Sana’a,” the report read.

Over the past ten years, selling artifacts in the four Middle East countries by terrorist groups like ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra/Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and al Qaeda was a profitable source of income for the groups to commit their atrocities to buy weapons and recruit more members, the CFJ said in its report, adding that hundreds of thousands of artifacts from these conflict areas go to Europe and the United States via other countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

“These crimes have been widely documented and are currently subject to prosecution in a number of domestic jurisdictions,” the report said.

Thus, the CFJ Docket announced that it is gathering evidence against the antiquities dealers so they can be prosecuted for charges of “complicity in war crimes,” adding “initial evidence packages to prosecution and law enforcement authorities.”

Although several initiatives have been adopted to curb the trading in antiquities, little success has been achieved, as smugglers and traders can exploit the “insufficient regulatory” infrastructure in the source countries and the absence of “standardization of measures across transit and market countries,” the CFJ said.

According to a report published by the National News on May 22, a total of 854,742 cultural property objects were seized globally throughout 2020, with about more than $50 billion to be then auctioned and shown in the US and Europe.

Several days ago, the former director of the Louvre Museum in Paris, Jean-Luc Martinez, was charged with “conspiring” to hide the origin of artifacts smuggled from Egypt during the Arab Spring. Also, in mid-May, a Brit and a German were charged with smuggling artifacts outside Iraq.