"The illegal trade in antiquities is not a victimless crime," said Anya Neistat, legal director of The Docket, a program of this foundation specializing in the fight against human rights violations, in presenting to Washington a two-year investigation into the trafficking of cultural treasures looted in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, then resold in the United States and Europe.

This trafficking, controlled by armed groups such as the Islamic State organization (IS) or the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, allows them to buy weapons and finance acts of war or attacks, indicated Anya Neistat.

IS, which controlled large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq between 2011 and 2016, had created a sub-ministry dedicated to antiquities, which granted licenses to looters of archaeological sites and levied taxes on the sale of antiquities. pieces, she explained.

Looting is considered a war crime by the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute having established the International Criminal Court and the UN Security Council, underlined a lawyer for the foundation, Manel Chibane.

The stolen pieces transit through Turkey, Lebanon, Eastern Europe or Thailand to be sold by art dealers or during private sales, especially online.

Currently, the majority of works found are seized and returned to the countries where they were looted, but dealers are only prosecuted for offenses, not war crimes, according to the NGO.

Faced with highly organized networks and a poorly regulated art market, criminal prosecutions for serious crimes "are a fundamental element in breaking the cycle" of trafficking "and ensuring that the inbound market is dismantled to create a sufficient deterrent that will stop the looting," said Anya Neistat.

This report comes shortly after the indictment in France of Jean-Luc Martinez, the former boss of the Louvre, the largest museum in the world, for alleged trafficking in antiquities from the Near and Middle East.

As part of this investigation, five Egyptian pieces, in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum in New York but potentially the result of looting, were recently seized by American justice.

© 2022 AFP