A 2011 Sotheby’s catalog shows a thousand-year-old statue believed to be from the Koh Ker temple in Cambodia.
Federal prosecutors seeking to repatriate a 10th century statue to Cambodia filed
court papers Monday accusing Sotheby’s of knowing the sculpture “was an
important piece of cultural property that had been stolen” from a
remote temple complex when the auction house put the massive sandstone
artifact up for sale in March 2011.
In June, Sotheby’s had asked a
federal judge in Manhattan to dismiss the U.S. government’s civil
action to force the return of the statue of a Hindu warrior that was
originally located at a temple site in Koh Ker.
Sotheby’s has
argued that Cambodia never declared ownership of the statue before the
auction house sought to sell it for as much as $3 million on behalf of
its Belgian owner and that no one has provided proof the item was
stolen.
In their new filing, the prosecutors included statements
from two heritage law experts who said that, under Cambodian and British
law, the statue should be treated as stolen property.
One expert,
Matthew Rendall, said the statue is covered under Cambodian statutes,
royal orders and decrees dating to the early 1900s that declare such
items to be the “exclusive” and “immovable” property of the government.
Mr. Rendall noted five occasions between 1985 and 1997 when Sotheby’s
returned sculptures to Cambodia after claims they had been looted
sometime after 1970.
Sotheby’s says the sculpture could have been
spirited away any time during its thousand-year history and was bought
in good faith by the husband of its current owner in 1975 from a London
dealer.
Experts cited by the United States and Cambodian
governments insist the statue was removed more recently. The say it was
too remotely located and too heavy – more than 600 pounds — to have been
carried off until adequate roads were built into the region sometime
after 1960.
No comments:
Post a Comment