[CPProt.net] January 6, 2005: Israel releases name suspect in alleged antiquities fraud; UK hands over 30 Iranian ancient artifacts; India, Post-theft scurry for magic eye; Stolen calligraphy recovered in Beijing; Looting of Iraq's Antiquities Continues; Breitwieser

[MusSecNetworkCulPropProtNet]

January 6, 2005
___________________________________________

- Israel releases name of fifth suspect in alleged antiquities fraud

- UK hands over 30 Iranian ancient artifacts

- As in Calcutta, so in London: Pilferers strike in V&A Museum on the same
day

- India, Post-theft scurry for magic eye

- Stolen calligraphy recovered in Beijing

- Cultural Leaders say Looting of Iraq's Antiquities Continues

- France, Breitwieser: What did this man's mother do when he stole these
valuable artworks? A: She dumped them in the canal

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Israel releases name of fifth suspect in alleged antiquities fraud
10:55 AM EST Jan 04

JERUSALEM (AP) - The former head of the antiquities laboratory at the
distinguished Israel Museum is the fifth suspect in a sophisticated forgery
ring that allegedly produced a treasure trove of fake Bible-era artifacts, a
government official and museum spokeswoman said Monday.

Justice Ministry spokesman Uri Steinberg identified the man as Rafael Braun.
He said he was the fifth person appearing on an indictment that was handed
down by a Jerusalem court last week.

Police said the ring forged what were presented as perhaps the two biggest
biblical discoveries in the Holy Land in recent years - the purported burial
box of Jesus's brother James and a stone tablet with written instructions by
King Yoash on maintenance work at the Jewish Temple.

Braun's name was withheld during a five-day effort by the court to track him
down, Steinberg said.

A court official could not say whether Braun had been located.

An Israel Museum spokeswoman confirmed that Braun was employed at the museum
as the head of the antiquities laboratories, but left in the late 1970s or
early 1980s.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Israeli antiquities expert said Braun
was living in Switzerland, where he worked as an antiquities restorer.

The indictment accused Braun and antiquities collector Shlomo Cohen of
attempting to forge an inscription on an ostracon - a fragment of limestone
pottery - from the period of the kingdoms of Judea, which lasted from the
10th to sixth century B.C.

"During or close to 1995 the two accused men formed a conspiracy to forge an
ostracon with the purpose that it would constitute an ostracon with an
inscription from the period of the Judean kingdoms," the indictment said.
"The accused did this for financial benefit."

Beside Braun and Cohen, the Israeli accused three other men in the
antiquities frauds-Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan; Robert Deutsch, an
inscriptions expert who teaches at Haifa University; and antiquities dealer
Faiz al-Amaleh. 


http://www.cbc.ca/

________________________________


UK hands over 30 Iranian ancient artifacts
Persian Journal

Iran News
UK hands over 30 Iranian ancient artifacts
 
Jan 2, 2005, 10:18

Customs officials of London's Heathrow Airport handed over 30 ancient
artifacts to the Iranian Embassy in London on Wednesday. The artifacts were
being smuggled into Britain but were confiscated by customs agents.

Over 100 artifacts from the 5000-year-old Jiroft site in Iran's Kerman
Province were discovered in two packages at Heathrow Airport last summer.

British officials also handed over an ancient bowl to the Iranian Embassy in
November. The bowl had been presented for auction at Sotheby's in London.

In addition, an official of Iran's Cultural Heritage and Tourism
Organization (CHTO) announced in early December that Turkey planned to
return some Seljuk era artifacts to Iran which had been smuggled into the
country over the past few years, in line with the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

The UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit
Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970) is the
first agreement of its kind, which has been accepted worldwide. It seeks to
protect cultural property against theft, illicit export, and wrongful
alienation.

Iran has also taken major steps in recent years to fulfill its obligations
as a signatory to the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

Last year, Iran delivered about 200 artifacts from Afghanistan to President
Hamid Karzai at Niavaran Palace in Tehran. The artifacts had been smuggled
into Iran during the wars in Afghanistan.

Iranian.ws

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As in Calcutta, so in London: Pilferers strike in V&A Museum on the same day

-	
-	AMIT ROY 


London, Jan. 4: By a curious coincidence, at almost exactly the same time
that a fifth century Buddha head was being stolen from the Indian Museum in
Calcutta last week, thieves were breaking into the apparently much better
guarded Victoria and Albert Museum in London. 
Perhaps this is not such a coincidence since art theft has become a global
menace.

Today, the British Museum offered its expertise to its counterpart in
Calcutta through the medium of The Telegraph and said it would be happy to
collaborate and share information to improve security.
The British Museum “works with its counterparts all over the world” and is,
at present, helping conservation and cataloguing at the Baghdad Museum,
where “between 13,000 and 14,000 of its 170,000 objects are still missing”. 
The British Museum says it is always on the lookout for stolen treasures, if
only to discourage art theft in the Third World. “Sometimes, they are
brought in for our curators to look at,” said a spokeswoman.
If this was the case with an object whose provenance could not be proved —
for example, with the Buddha head stolen in Calcutta — “it would immediately
arouse suspicion”. 

Given the experiences in London, the surprise is not that the Indian Museum
has had a Buddha stolen but that more have not been pilfered over the years.
Although the joke in London is that thieves have reduced theft from museums
to a fine art, the wisecrack isn’t all that funny. 
Last week, while the theft in Calcutta was taking place, the V&A, despite
its better security, was about to be raided for the third time in as many
months.
The theft precisely followed the patterns of the earlier attacks: tools were
used to force an old wooden display case, and a pocketful of small,
beautiful objects was grabbed. 

“The V&A has appealed for help from the art and antiques world in tracing
eight objects stolen from the museum,” said a spokeswoman. “They are eight
Italian Renaissance bronze plaquettes (small plaques), each about 10 cm
high, all depicting religious scenes.” 
Two are worth around £100,000-150,000 and the other six vary in value
between £30,000 and 45,000. 
Mark Jones, the director of the V&A, said: “This appears to have been a
well-planned professional theft. The V&A is in the middle of a major
programme to upgrade security and replace old display cases with new cases
throughout the museum and many galleries have been completed. This theft
underlines the need to proceed as rapidly as possible. We are talking to the
department of culture, media and sport about how the process of upgrading
can be accelerated.”
The third theft is nothing if not embarrassing. On October 5, a group of
nine small jade objects were stolen from the ceramics galleries. On November
24 followed the second theft — 15 small Meissen (porcelain made at Meissen
in Germany) figures were stolen, again from the ceramics galleries. 
There is the suspicion that the same gang — or one light-fingered individual
— is involved. The three thefts revealed detailed knowledge of the security
and visitor patterns in the museum — what in Calcutta has been called an
“inside hand”. 
In each incident, the galleries were hit during opening hours but at a time
when the museum was quiet, and in each, the cases were old timber ones and
areas chosen were not covered by security cameras. 

The V&A spokeswoman disclosed that museums routinely seek intelligence from,
among others, the Art Loss Register, an organisation with offices in Europe
and America which “aims to help find what’s missing”. 
Nor is the V&A the only museum to suffer. The Science Museum has also
recently been targeted by thieves. Objects associated with a notorious Tudor
alchemist and reputed wizard, Dr John Dee, were stolen before Christmas. 

According to former detective sergeant Dick Ellis, of Scotland Yard’s art &
antiques squad, museum “security is a constantly moving target. As new
security systems are developed, criminals develop means to get around them
and security becomes an extremely expensive commodity. But it is very
important that security is under a constant review and the systems are
upgraded.”
Art theft is a Europe-wide problem. Last year, armed robbers stole the
iconic Edvard Munch (the great Norwegian artist) painting, The Scream, from
the Munch Museum in Oslo. Two masked thieves pulled the work and another
painting, Madonna, off the wall in front of stunned visitors. One robber
threatened staff with a gun before the pair escaped in a waiting car.
The Munch Museum said the two stolen paintings were among its most valuable
— worth an estimated $19 million.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/


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Post-theft scurry for magic eye
KINSUK BASU

Waking up to a security sieve after a valuable Buddha has gone missing, the
country’s oldest museum has decided to instal a modern surveillance system,
complete with new-generation infra-red sensors and cameras.

A week after the December 29 theft of the 5th Century sandstone head of
Buddha, Indian Museum director Shakti Kali Basu said on Tuesday that the
surveillance system, once installed, would make the Chowringhee landmark as
secure as the National Museum and Salar Jung Museum.

A proposal seeking funds to the tune of Rs 1 crore has been sent for a nod
to the department of culture in Delhi.

“We have already put forward a detailed proposal for a modern surveillance
system. We will begin work as soon as we receive the official okay,” said
Basu.

Also awaiting the nod was the special crime branch of the CBI. “We are yet
to receive an official intimation about commencing the probe,” claimed A.K.
Sahay, superintendent of police, CBI.

The move to overhaul the security system comes days before a high-powered
delegation from the department of culture, led by Union secretary Neena
Ranjan, arrives to attend an emergency meeting called by Governor Gopal
Krishna Gandhi.

The meeting, to be attended by the board of trustees of Indian Museum, will
discuss security proposals in line with recommendations being drafted by a
committee, headed by National Museum director K.K. Chakraborty, reviewing
security in all major museums across India.

As per the Indian Museum proposal, infra-red sensors, smoke detectors and
burglary alarms are a must.

But the star feature of the new security blanket would be the Access Control
System, capable of retrieving images of all visitors entering and exiting
the museum.

This would enable the authorities to scan the identity of each visitor and
detect, by means of an X-ray, any artefact being carried out.

Apart from the galleries, the infra-red sensors would also be placed in the
Paintings Gallery.

Till the security revamp, the authorities have decided to keep away a few
precious but small exhibits. “Since all the items are not covered within our
existing security system, we have decided to pull them out of the display
galleries,” explained director Basu.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/

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Stolen calligraphy recovered in Beijing

A stolen calligraphy album by ancient Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi has finally
been recovered and three people arrested on suspicion of theft, Beijing
police announced yesterday.

The album, which was set to go under the hammer for a base price of 3
million yuan (US$360,000) in December, disappeared as it was being shown at
the Asian Hotel a couple of days before the auction.

Local police did not immediately release news of the incident, but word got
out when its absence was noticed among the 1,880 lots, which included
curios, ancient writings and paintings. Known as "Master Zhu," Zhu was the
considered the most important person in Confucianism after Confucius and
Mencius in ancient China. His interpretations were considered orthodox
Confucian thinking during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (1279-1911).

The stolen work is a poem written by Zhu in 1182 to celebrate two of his
followers passing imperial civil examinations.

Yi Suhao, general manager of Zhongmao Shengjia International Auction Co Ltd,
said there are only two copies of the poem still in existence. The other is
in the Taipei Palace Museum collection.

"The album was in the possession of a collector in Hong Kong. He wants it to
go back to the mainland by auction," said Yi.

Liu Ruibin, head of the Dongcheng Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public
Security Bureau, said local police had questioned more than 100 people at
the hotel on the day it was stolen.

Beijinger Diao Chongjing was arrested after allegedly admitting he took the
work while guards were not looking.

On December 15, Diao and an accomplice allegedly hid the volume in a church
in downtown Beijing.

In total three are facing trial.

Source: China Daily

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Cultural Leaders say Looting of Iraq's Antiquities Continues
By Barbara Schoetzau
New York
06-January-2005 0001


The cultural world was outraged at the massive looting of Iraqi museums and
historic sites that took place in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion in
2003. Libraries were set on fire, statues were smashed and priceless
cultural treasures were stolen. Iraq's cultural leaders say the looting
continues despite safeguards put into place since the fall of Saddam
Hussein's regime.


Iraqi cultural officials say the looting of museums has stopped. But they
say robbers continue to move from province to province plundering
archeological sites. Director of museums, Donny George Youkhanna, says as
many as 15,000 objects disappeared from Iraq's museums and cultural sites.
He says all are of historic importance, but some were of particular
significance.

"The small piece of ivory, the Nubian and the lioness, this is one of the
extraordinary pieces," he said. "We have lost the statue of the Sumerian
king Antemena. This might be one of the oldest statues actually having the
name of a king on it, mentioning that this is a king on it, in the history
of mankind. That piece is lost."

Thousands of other objects were returned or captured by either international
police or guards belonging to a new federal protection system. Some items,
undoubtedly, were stolen by poor people looking for a way to make money. But
officials found clear signs, including glass cutters and keys, that much of
the theft at the museums was planned ahead of time by knowledgeable people.

"Some people who entered the storerooms of the antiques knew exactly where
to go inside," said Aziz Hameed, president of the Iraqi Ministry of Culture.
"Of course, it was complete darkness. There is no electricity. They had to
light a candle or something, but they went straight to the place where the
important pieces were and took them away. We found that piece of information
of great help to us. We began our inquiry there."

Iraq is drawing up a so-called black list that will ban institutions and
individual scholars who deal with stolen material from access to Iraqi
museums. And the Iraqi officials are encouraged by a series of measures put
in place by western governments to discourage art theft. Still, Donny George
says the flow of antiquities out of Iraq will not stop until demand ceases.

"There are people outside of Iraq in the United States, in Europe, in Japan,
who are following and asking for material and they are paying so much," he
said. "If there was no one to buy, there would be no material to be sold.
These are the people who are to be blamed because they are encouraging the
robbery of this world heritage that we have there in the country."

The Iraqis are developing a new database to document and catalogue their
antiquities with help from the New York-based World Monuments Fund and the
Getty Conservation Institute. But because many of the objects are so well
known that they cannot be sold openly, cultural experts fear they are in
private collections and will not be seen again for one or two generations. 


http://www.voanews.com/

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What did this man's mother do when he stole these valuable artworks? A: She
dumped them in the canal
>From Charles Bremner in Paris
	
Breitwieser stole hundreds of works of art from museums and galleries across
Europe
	

A YOUNG French art lover who became one of the world’s most successful
thieves is expected to tell a Strasbourg court that a passion for beauty
drove him to steal paintings and artworks from the museums and galleries of
Europe.

The exploits of Stéphane Breitwieser, 33, stunned the art world in 2002 when
he admitted that he alone stole 239 works, including masterpieces by Pieter
Brueghel, Watteau and Dürer, and other items worth tens of millions of
pounds that vanished between 1995 and 2001 from seven countries.

Embarrassed curators of the small museums favoured by Breitwieser had
believed that they were the victims of a cunning gang.

The “gentleman thief”, as the media dubbed Breitwieser, was returned to his
native Alsace from Switzerland last July after serving three years in prison
for the theft of 69 works there.

Breitwieser, a hotel employee who became a passionate collector, took
impeccable care of his haul in his home in the Alsacian village of
Gerstheim.

Breitwieser stole hundreds of works of art including a portrait of Madeleine
of France, by Corneille de Lyon, top left, The Princess of Cleves by Lucas
Cranach, top right, Cheating Benefits its Master by Peter Brueghel, bottom
left, and two small cupels crafted from silver, bottom right

However, after his arrest in 2001 the most valuable items were lost when
Mireille Stengel, his mother, took an axe to what she called his
bric-a-brac. She shredded the canvases in a waste-disposal unit and dumped
much of his collection in the nearby Rhine-Rhone canal. Antiques worth £6.5
million were retrieved from the water, including baroque chalices, ivory
carvings and a silver galleon.

Among the dozens of artworks destroyed were The Princess of Cleves by Lucas
Cranach, which was taken from Sotheby’s in Baden-Baden, Germany, in 1995;
Cheating Benefits its Master, by Peter Brueghel, stolen from a museum in
Antwerp in 1997; and Le Patre Endormi by François Boucher and a portrait of
James V’s first wife, Madeleine of France, by Corneille de Lyon, which were
both taken from a museum in Blois in 1996.

Mme Stengel, 53, is on trial with her son and with Anne-Catherine
Kleinklauss, his ex-girlfriend. Both are charged with receiving. During the
Swiss trial it emerged that Mme Stengel destroyed the art as an act of
revenge against her son, who was described by experts as an immature,
over-protected only child.

In their verdict in February 2003, the judges in the canton of Gruyères
noted that Breitwieser had never sold a work. “His taste for art was not
base or materialist. It was above all the love of art and not money or the
act of stealing that drove him to take these works,” they said.

Breitwieser, who was the grand-nephew of Robert Breitwieser, a well-known
Alsacian artist, acquired his passion as a child when his parents took him
on visits to museums.

After failing to reach the Louvre fine arts school, he took a two-year
diploma in hotel management while learning everything he could about art.
His parents’ divorce at the time deeply upset him, the Swiss court was told.
In a letter to Roland Breitwieser, his father, a business executive, he said
he was drawn into theft by frustration, knowing that he could never afford
the works that he admired in the salerooms.

Borrowing his mother’s BMW convertible and elegantly dressed, he toured
poorly guarded provincial museums around the Continent posing as a
collector. He was at first amazed at the ease with which he could cut a
painting out of its frame and stuff it in a backpack, or steal larger
objects when guards’ backs were turned. At the Chateau de Gruyères he
removed a 17th-century 16 sq m tapestry woven in Flanders.

Unable to carry it, he threw it out the window and recovered it later from
the moat.

The thief’s bravado proved his downfall. He was arrested in November 2001
when he returned to the Richard Wagner museum in Lucerne only two days after
stealing a hunting horn worth £40,000. A guard recognised him and called the
police.

Breitwieser, who is reported to have been co-operating with the French
investigating judge, faces only a maximum three-year jail term after the
two-day trial. As a condition for extraditing him, Switzerland insisted that
he be charged with simple theft.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

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