Iran Press/ Iran: Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Gholamali Khoshroo said on Tuseday, the bas-relief depicting the head of an Achaemenid soldier, an antique artifact of ancient Iran, was returned to Iran.
“I’m very pleased that today, a very important cultural item that was smuggled from Iran was delivered to me by the District Attorney of New York County. This object belongs to about 2,500 years ago, and it is a Persian guard’s relief of the Achaemenid era,” Khoshrou told Press TV.
He added that thanks to Iran’s efforts, a complaint was filed in court and the case was closed with final verdict approving Iran’s right ordering the Persian piece to be returned to Iran.
The Achaemenid relief delivered to Iran's envoy for transferring to the country.
A New York Supreme Court judge ordered in late July that a Persian bas-relief dating to approximately 500 B.C. to be returned to Iran.
The bas-relief, was seized in October by investigators for the Manhattan district attorney’s office from the Park Avenue Armory, where it was being offered for sale at an art fair.
Investigators have said the item, valued at $1.2 million, was reported stolen from Iran in 1936 and stolen later in 2011 from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, to which it had been donated decades earlier.
However, the two London-based owners of the relief, Rupert Wace and Sam Fogg, have claimed they acquired the object legally from the Montreal museum’s insurance company.
US Supreme Court forbidden seizure of ancient Persian artifacts in February, and ruled that Americans injured in a 1997 suicide bombing in in Israeli occupied Palestinian territories cannot seize ancient Persian artifacts from a Chicago museum to satisfy a $71.5 million court judgment against Iran, which they had accused of complicity in the attack.
US Supreme Court forbidden seizure of Persian artifacts
In 2006, a group of victims of a 1997 explosion at a pedestrian mall in Jerusalem al-Quds were awarded $71 million by a federal judge in Chicago.
The attack, which killed five people and injured 200, was claimed by the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas.
US government also tried to seize an office tower in New York City owned largely by an Iranian charity organization, the Alavi Foundation.
The US. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted stays pending appeal on forfeiture actions against Alavi Foundation.
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