Italy Hands Over Stolen Artifacts to Iran
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – About 30 stolen artifacts belonging to Iran, which had been smuggled to Italy over the past years, were delivered to the Iranian embassy in Rome.
During a ceremony held at the National Museum of Oriental Art in the Italian capital, the historical objects belonging to Iran's pre-Islamic and post-Islamic eras, which had been recovered by the Italian art police, were handed over to a representative of the Iranian embassy in Rome, media reports said on Friday.
Paola Piacentini, from the administrative office of the National Museum of Oriental Art, and Mohammad-Hassan Talebian, the deputy head of Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization, were present in the ceremony.
According to the report, after years of legal battle with the Italian art authorities, the Iranian legal team managed to get back the stolen artifacts following a restitution order by an appeal court of the northern Italian city of Milan.
The priceless antiques were delivered to the Iranian embassy thanks to the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, an international treaty on the subject of cultural property protection signed in 1995 in Rome, Talebian said on Friday.
The convention aims to reduce illegal traffic of cultural property by obligating buyers to check the legitimacy of their purchase.
He added that the procedure to transfer the artifacts to the Iranian National Museum would start in an official ceremony scheduled to be held in the Iranian Embassy in Rome next month.
