The FBI on Wednesday urged art dealers in the US to be careful when buying antiquities from the Middle East, saying there is evidence collectors have recently been offered artifacts plundered by Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.
The looting of ancient artifacts across Iraq and Syria and their sale on the black market has become a source of funding for the Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and there is growing concern those items are showing up in the Western marketplace, the FBI said in a news release.
“We now have credible reports that US persons have been offered cultural property that appears to have been removed from Syria and Iraq recently,” FBI Art Theft Program manager Bonnie Magness-Gardiner said.
Magness-Gardiner said collectors and buyers should be vigilant when checking importation, provenance and other documents.
“What we’re trying to say is, don’t allow these pieces that could potentially support terrorism to be part of the trade,” she said.
The Islamic State has ransacked some of the greatest archaeological sites in northern Iraq and Syria, posting photographs and videos of fighters destroying pre-Islamic monuments and temples they consider idolatrous.
On Tuesday, the group published photos purporting to show the destruction of the Roman-era Baal Shamin temple in the Syrian city of Palmyra, an act that UNESCO has called a war crime.
Last month, the US handed back to Iraq antiquities it said had been seized in a raid on Islamic State fighters in Syria, saying the retrieval was proof the group was attempting to sell the items to raise cash.
The relics included ancient cylindrical stamps, pottery, metallic bracelets and other jewelry.
Islamic State fighters have desecrated ancient Assyrian and Graeco-Roman palaces in northern Iraq, including the 2,700-year-old Assyrian capital of Khorsabad.
Growing concern the trade in plundered artifacts can help finance militants earned them the nickname “blood antiquities” — adapted from the phrase “blood diamond,” used to refer to gems that financed fighters in African wars from Angola to Sierra Leone.
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