Fri, Jan 19, 2007 page6

• Convict recalls half a century of looting Italy's antiquities

  • AP
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  A man convicted of looting Italy's archeological treasures allowed a rare glimpse into the world of art smuggling when he testified on Wednesday in the trial of a former J. Paul Getty Museum curator.

  Pietro Casasanta recalled half a century spent looting archeological treasures across the country, benefiting from what he said was a free-for-all environment that allowed smugglers and merchants to make a fortune by selling antiquities in Italy and abroad.

  Italian authorities say top European and US museums took advantage of that atmosphere to acquire looted Roman, Greek and Etruscan artifacts.

  As part of their efforts to recover the lost treasures, they have placed former Getty curator Marion True and American art dealer Robert Hecht on trial in Rome, accused of knowingly trafficking in stolen artifacts.

  True did not attend Wednesday's proceedings, but Hecht was in court. Both defendants deny wrongdoing.

  New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts have agreed to return antiquities, but negotiations with the Los Angeles museum over 47 contested artifacts have been stalled for months.

  Casasanta said he had never met or made business with the defendants, but was testifying for the prosecution to present a broad look on how the illegal antiquities market functioned in Italy. Most of his discoveries were sold to local antique dealers in Rome although he said he could not rule out that some had been later passed on to international merchants.

  Casasanta, 68, has served time in jail for art trafficking and is still on trial over some of the thousands of artifacts he uncovered during brazen illegal digs.

  The raider defended his actions, saying that the underground antiquities trade was tolerated for decades until authorities started the recent crackdown. He also claimed he had saved art that would have been otherwise destroyed in development projects.

  "From one day to the next we went from art experts to criminals," he said. "I saved thousands of artifacts that would have been ground into cement ... It's a shame that they don't make me a senator for life."

  Although security may have been more lax in previous decades, prosecutor Paolo Ferri noted that rules against art trafficking were well in place, including a 1939 law making all antiquities found in the country state property.

  Casasanta told the court he would poke around construction sites and find treasures in piles of earth that had been dug up. But he also organized his own vast excavations, working in daylight with two or three people using bulldozers over thousands of square meters.

  Guided by a self-styled code of honor, Casasanta said he concentrated mainly on the ruins of ancient Roman villas in the countryside around the Italian capital, refusing to loot the art-rich Etruscan tombs that are one of preferred targets of Italy's tombaroli, or grave robbers.

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