Spanish police return a wooden chest and 11 wooden engravings stolen from Swedish churches

Police seized the items -- a wooden chest and 11 wooden engravings -- last month on Spain's Canary Islands.

MADRID (AFP).- Spanish police on Monday returned 12 artworks, including several 15th-century wood engravings, to Sweden's embassy in Madrid after they were allegedly stolen by a Spaniard from Swedish churches and museums. Police seized the items -- a wooden chest and 11 wooden engravings -- last month on Spain's Canary Islands at the home of a 63-year-old man who they suspect stole the items in Sweden, police said in a statement. They were among a total of 46 Swedish artworks that were found in his house which the authorities suspect were stolen.

Sweden's ambassador to Spain, Cecilia Julin, said the 12 items turned over to the Swedish embassy had been stolen from churches and local museums in central Sweden over the past two years. Several of the wooden engravings date back to the 15th century and two Swedish police officers were in Madrid to organise the transportation of the works back to Sweden, Julin told AFP. "I think people will be celebrating in some parts of central Sweden. It is a fantastic story. Sometimes justice is done," she said. "It is not possible to put a price on the items." Swedish police officers had tipped off Spanish police that the man was the prime suspect in their probe into the art thefts.

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Nazi-looted painting by Max Liebermann from Gurlitt trove fetches £1.865 million

Two Riders on a Beach was first shown in public in 1901, the year it was painted. Estimate: £350,000 – 550,000 / €480,000 - 750,000 / $540,000 - 850,000. Photo: Sotheby's. By: Ruth Holmes

LONDON (AFP).- A Nazi-looted painting that was hidden for decades smashed expectations at a rare sale in London on Wednesday as investigators work painstakingly to identify the origins of hundreds of other works from the same haul. Max Liebermann's "Two Riders on a Beach" was found among more than 1,200 works of art in the Munich apartment of German recluse Cornelius Gurlitt when police raided it in 2012, capturing global attention. The 1901 oil painting went under the hammer at Sotheby's for £1.865 million ($2.92 million, 2.61 million euros), more than three times the pre-sale upper estimate of £550,000. It is the first from the Gurlitt collection to be auctioned off while the origins of many of the works remain unknown.

"The challenge is to go through the provenance of every single picture in this collection," Sotheby's director Bernhard Brandstaetter said. "It is a lengthy process to establish where a picture comes from, when it was bought and so on," he said, describing the collection as "probably the most significant find in the last 30 years". Richard Aronowitz, European head of restitution for Sotheby's, described the Liebermann painting as a "scene of great tranquility and joy in nature", adding: "This counterbalances the great sadness and trauma of the work's history."
Wednesday's auction also included a Gustav Klimt portrait lost to Jewish owners during the Nazi regime and had come on sale after the resolution of a dispute between descendants of the artist and the subject. The painting went for £24,789,000, exceeding the pre-sale estimate of £18 million. Helena Newman, Sotheby's co-head of impressionist and modern Art, described it as "one of his finest portraits to appear at auction in over 20 years." Disappeared from public view David Toren, one of several heirs of the Liebermann painting, was just 13 when he saw the picture being taken by the Nazis from the estate of his great-uncle David Friedmann in 1938, the day after the Kristallnacht pogrom.

Now, aged 90 and blind, Toren said he is unable to appreciate the painting, returned after a legal battle as the German government still seeks to establish the provenance of other works in the hoard. Paintings by Picasso, Manet and Chagall were among the huge trove discovered when German police raided Gurlitt's unassuming apartment in Munich.

The Nazis plundered artworks in Germany and across Europe before and during World War II. Thousands of stolen artworks have since been returned to their owners or their descendants, but many more have never resurfaced. The Liebermann painting was sold by the Nazis, ending up in the hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, an art dealer tasked by Hitler to plunder works from museums and Jewish collectors. The works were inherited by his son Cornelius, who himself died last year. "Since then it has disappeared from public view," said Brandstaetter. "What's so surprising is that it was hidden away for so long. "When it arrived here it was very dirty. You could see it had not been cared for. Many of the things Cornelius Gurlitt had in his house were just stuck somewhere, behind cupboards or under beds." It is one of only two paintings from the Gurlitt stash to be returned to their owners.

The Kunstmuseum Bern is working with German authorities to find other rightful owners -- but faces a laborious task. Friederike Schwelle, manager of provenance research and restitution at the Art Loss Register, said the Gurlitt find prompted many people to come forward believing they had claims to paintings from the haul. "Locating heirs can be quite difficult because some perished during the Holocaust and others have since died," she said, adding that is was "very difficult to say" how much art was looted by the Nazis overall. "People suspect there might still be about 100,000 objects out there that might be involved in Nazi looting that are still missing."

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United States returns 17th century books, stolen in Stockholm in the 1990s, to Sweden

The work by Italian architect Nicola Sabbatini, printed in 1638, is about stage craft and theater machinery

NEW YORK (AFP).- Two antique books dating back to the 17th century, stolen in Stockholm in the 1990s and sold to Americans by a German auction house, were returned to Sweden on Wednesday. US authorities handed back the books, intercepted by the FBI from a rare book store in Manhattan and from Cornell University, to the National Library of Sweden at a ceremony in New York. Both books were printed in the early 1600s in Europe. Neither of their most recent owners knew they had been stolen. The work by Italian architect Nicola Sabbatini, printed in 1638, is about stage craft and theater machinery, and "Oculus" by Bavarian physicist Christopher Scheiner is about the history of optics. It was printed in 1619.

US prosecutors said they are two of at least 56 rare books stolen from the National Library of Sweden by employee Anders Burius between 1995 and 2004. Operating under a fake name, he sold them to German auction house, Ketterer Kunst, for cash. In 2004, he confessed and later committed suicide, US officials said. Swedish investigators discovered that Ketterer sold 13 of the books to customers in the United States. The Sabbatini book was bought by Richard Lan, owner of Martayan Lan Rare Books in New York in 2001 for more than 27,436 euros ($30,850 by the current exchange rate). The Scheiner was bought by a bookseller in New York in 1999, which sold it in 2001 to Cornell -- one of the most elite universities in the country and based in Ithaca, New York. Both Cornell and Lan surrendered the books voluntarily to the FBI so that they could be returned to the National Library of Sweden after being informed they had been stolen.

"The Library contains the cultural memory of Sweden. The theft of pieces of a nation's memory and heritage creates holes in its intellectual soul," said Deputy US Attorney Richard Zabel. "I'm proud that this office has been at the forefront of recovering what has been taken from many different nations' cultural histories, including Sweden today."

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Canada star politics journalist Evan Solomon fired over alleged secret art deals

The Toronto Star said Solomon had taken commissions in excess of Can$300,000 for several art pieces. Photo: Tholden28/Wikipedia.org.

OTTAWA (AFP).- Canada's public broadcaster has fired its top politics reporter Evan Solomon after discovering he earned hefty commissions on art sales to wealthy Canadians he interviewed. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in a statement late Tuesday cited a conflict of interest and ethics policy, as well as a breach of journalistic standards and practises for the dismissal. It comes after the daily Toronto Star reported that Solomon had brokered the sale of paintings belonging to art collector Bruce Bailey to BlackBerry founder Jim Balsillie and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney. Carney had been a frequent guest on his daily politics show, while Balsillie had been courted to appear. The Toronto Star also said Solomon had taken commissions in excess of Can$300,000 for several art pieces. The newspaper cited an email in which Solomon discusses access to a wealth of potential new customers after Carney moved to Britain to head the Bank of England. "He has access to highest power network in the world," Solomon reportedly wrote. Solomon said in a statement he formed a business in 2013 to broker Canadian art, and informed the CBC earlier this year. "I did not view the art business as a conflict with my political journalism at the CBC and never intentionally used my position at the CBC to promote the business," he said in a statement. Solomon also apologised for "the damage that my activities have done to the trust that the CBC and its viewers and listeners have put in me."

Soloman, 47, came to the CBC as a host in 1994. He most recently hosted the television show "Power & Politics" as well as "The House" on CBC Radio. Some reports said he was also being groomed to take over the nation's top on-air job as CBC evening news anchor when the current veteran anchor retires. His firing is just the latest ethical imbroglio involving CBC journalists. Financial news host Amanda Lang was accused of being in a conflict over her 2013 reporting on a Canadian bank that sponsored several speeches she gave. She was also said to have been dating a senior executive at the bank. The CBC cleared her of wrongdoing but banned all paid appearances by its on-air journalists. The following year, syndicated radio host Jian Ghomeshi was fired by the CBC after at least a dozen women came forward with accusations he strangled them, punched them or slammed them against walls. Ghomeshi, who has been charged with sexual assault, has argued that his acts were consensual rough sex of the kind found in erotic novels such as the best-seller "Fifty Shades of Grey."

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Antiquities market on alert for looted Syrian spoils to help finance the jihadists' war

Fighters loyal to Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and its allies smash a statue of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, father of current President Bashar al-Assad on March 28, 2015 in the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib . A coalition made up of Al-Nusra Front, the official Syrian affiliate of Al-Qaeda, and several Islamist factions seized the city of Idlib, only the second provincial capital to be lost by the regime in more than four years of war. AFP PHOTO / SAMI ALI.


LONDON (AFP).- As armed groups in Syria and Iraq destroy priceless archaeological sites, European authorities and dealers are on high alert for smaller, looted artefacts put on sale to help finance the jihadists' war. Stolen-art expert Chris Marinello, director of Art Recovery International, said he has been shown photographs of items being offered from Syria that were "clearly looted right out of the ground". "You could still see dirt on some of these objects," he told AFP. They included cylinder seals, Roman bottles and vases, although Marinello said it was unclear whether the items were still in Syria, were in transit or had arrived in the key markets of Europe and the United States.

Concerns about looting during the Syrian war have increased following the advance of the Islamic State group through parts of Syria and Iraq, and recent propaganda videos showing their destruction of ancient sites such as Nimrud. The UN Security Council in February demanded UN states act to stop the trade in cultural property from those two countries, amid warnings that they represented a significant source of funding for the militant group. Experts say it is impossible to put a value on antiquities looted from Syria, which has been home to many civilisations through the millennia, from the Canaanites to the Ottomans.

The London-based International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA) estimates the entire legitimate antiquities market in 2013 was worth between 150 and 200 million euros ($160-215 million). Marinello said reputable dealers are "being very careful not to touch anything that could remotely be part of this recent wave of looting". But Hermann Parzinger, an archaeologist and president of the Germany-based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, said there was an "enormous market" from private buyers. He warned that the cultural costs were huge, telling AFP: "The context which is so important to reconstruct the history of these civilisations is completely destroyed."

Looted items held back Italy has proposed that world heritage body UNESCO create a military taskforce to protect cultural sites in war zones, but many experts believe little can be done to stop the current destruction. Instead, they are forced to wait until the conflict ends and watch in horror as priceless historic sites are destroyed and the spoils gradually emerge onto the market. Vernon Rapley, a former head of the art and antiquities squad at London's Metropolitan Police, expects many Syrian items to be held back to avoid flooding the market, as occurred after the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The looted artefacts were likely to be "hauled up in warehouses either in the country or near the country, and only linked to the art trade in small pieces and at a later stage", he told AFP. Stephane Thefo, who leads an Interpol unit dedicated to fighting the illegal trafficking of cultural goods, agreed that many items may disappear for years -- but insisted that tackling the trade was the best way to combat looting.
The French policeman would like to see tougher national laws on trafficking of cultural goods, something Germany is currently considering. "We have to act by seeking to narrow markets for the illicit trade, hoping that by curbing the demand, the supply would eventually decrease," Thefo said. Identifying heritage items Identifying looted objects is no easy task, however, not least because cultural crime is rarely a police priority.

The law puts the onus on the authorities to prove an item is illegal and a long delay in an artefact being sold, or multiple owners, make it hard to establish provenance. At a conference at the V&A museum in London this week on the destruction of cultural property in conflict areas in Iraq and Syria, Mali, Libya and Yemen, archaeologists stressed the need for proper inventories of heritage sites. They noted that objects that have been photographed and digitally catalogued are more likely to be recovered. Interpol is currently building a database of stolen objects, and James Ede, a London dealer and IADAA board member, urged cultural bodies to share their information with dealers. "This material will necessarily surface on the open market sooner or later. The challenge therefore is to identify it and where possible to return it when it is safe to do so," he said.

By: Alice Ritchie
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United States returns Egyptian artifacts smuggled by an international criminal network

A sarcophagus, which is part of more than 120 ancient artefacts that had been smuggled outside Egypt and were later confiscated by the US customs, is displayed for the press at Cairo International airport on April 24, 2015, after returning from the United States. The items were on a ministry list of smuggled items, and include a group of coloured coffins dating back to the 26th dynasty, a stele from the new kingdom and several Greco-Roman coins. AFP PHOTO / HOSAM ATEF.

WASHINGTON (AFP).- The United States returned Wednesday dozens of ancient artifacts that had been smuggled out of Egypt by an international criminal network, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.The items -- including a Greco-Roman style Egyptian sarcophagus discovered in a Brooklyn garage in 2009 -- were handed back to the Egyptian government at a ceremony in Washington. "To think that some of these treasured artifacts were recovered from garages, exposed to the elements, is unimaginable," said ICE director Sarah Saldana in a statement.

The discovery of the nesting sarcophagus generated leads that resulted in the 2010 seizure of more smuggled Egyptian items, including a funerary boat model and hundreds of ancient coins, ICE said. The items have been linked to a global crime network that is the subject of a five-year-old ICE effort known as Operation Mummy’s Curse.

So far, the effort has secured four indictments, two convictions, 19 search warrants and 16 seizures totaling approximately $3 million, ICE said. "The ongoing investigation has identified a criminal network of smugglers, importers, money launderers, restorers and purchasers who used illegal methods to avoid detection as these items entered the United States," ICE said. "Items and funds were traced back to Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Iraq and other nations." Since 2007, ICE has returned more than 80 items to Egypt in four repatriations -- and a total of more than 7,800 artifacts to 30-plus countries, from French paintings to Mongolian dinosaur fossils.

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ISIL fighters bulldoze ancient Assyrian palace in Iraq

Winged-bull statues were placed at the gates of Assyrian palaces as protective spirits [Getty Images]

Baghdad - Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters have used a bulldozer to start destroying a 3,000-year-old Assyrian city near Mosul in Iraq, archaeologists and other sources have told Al Jazeera. The demolition at Nimrud on Thursday comes less than a week after video was released showing ISIL fighters destroying ancient artefacts in a Mosul museum. "They came at midday with a bulldozer and started destroying the palace," said an Iraqi official in touch with antiquities staff in Mosul. She said the winged-bull statues known as lamassu at the gates of the palace of Ashurnasirpal II had been smashed. It was not clear what else had been destroyed on the site, about 20km southeast of Mosul.

In last week's ISIL video , fighters were shown using power drills and sledgehammers to try to destroy similar statues at the ancient site of Nineveh, within Mosul. The mutli-tonne figures were placed at the palaces' gates as protective spirits. One source told Al Jazeera the fighters warned Mosul residents last week that they would move on to Nimrud next. Hatra, a World Heritage Site, is also believed to be in danger. March 2: Iraqis mourn destruction of ancient statues Since 2002, the World Monuments Fund has listed Nimrud as one of the world’s most endangered sites. The intricate stone reliefs, exposed to the elements, have been decaying. Without security around the site, it has been exposed to looters. The palace belonged to King Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled a powerful empire that included Iraq, the Levant, lower Egypt and parts of Turkey and the Levant. The palace was built with precious wood, marble and other materials brought from the furthest reaches of his kingdom.

Nimrud, known as biblical Calah, is believed to have first been settled 7,000 years ago. At its height, up to 60,000 people lived in the walled city, which contained lush gardens and sprawling parks. Mostly excavated by the British, with the finds taken to the British Museum, the most spectacular discovery was an Iraqi one. In the late 1980s Iraqi archaeologist Muzahim Mahmood discovered a royal tomb containing one of the biggest finds of the last century - hundreds of pieces of golden jewelry and other objects belonging to an Assyrian queen. Iraq's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on Thursday condemned the destruction at Nimrud, stating that ISIL "continues to defy the will of world".


Jane Arraf | 05 Mar 2015 22:03 GMT | Arts & Culture, Iraq, Middle East, ISIL