US returns 77 looted artifacts to Yemen | World News

US has returned 77 looted people antiquities The items would be shipped to Yemen, U.S. authorities said on Tuesday, adding they would be stored “temporarily” in a Washington museum under an agreement with the war-torn country’s government.

The works are “64 relief stone statues, 11 Qur’anic manuscripts, a bronze inscription bowl, and a funerary stele” from the Minaean tribal culture in the northwestern highlands of Yemen, dating from the 1st century B.C., Eastern District Prosecutor Breon Peace New York region said in a statement.

The announcement was jointly issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the Smithsonian Institution, which includes nearly 20 museums in the United States.

For years, the New York State Department of Justice has been waging a massive campaign to restore artifacts that have been looted around the world and ended up in museums and galleries across the metropolis.

Between 2020 and 2021, at least 700 were returned to 14 countries, including Cambodia, Egypt, Greece, India, Iraq, Italy and Pakistan.

The DA statement said the 64 stone heads were confiscated in the United States as part of a 2012 plea deal from antiquities smuggler Mousa Khouli, also known as “Morris” Khouli.

The artifacts were imported from Dubai to the US using false documents.

Yemen’s ambassador to the United States, Mohammad Hadrami, expressed “deep gratitude” to New York, the statement said.

“I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the Smithsonian’s National Asian Art Museum for agreeing to temporarily preserve these artifacts until they are fully returned to Yemen in the future,” Al-Hadhrami said.

The Yemeni government and the museum have signed an agreement to preserve the items for two years, with an option to renew at Yemen’s request.

Yemen is ravaged by an eight-year civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and plunged the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula into one of the world’s worst humanitarian tragedies.