Posts
Bush was interrupted by applause as he said, "In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred and that each of us is willed."
Court upholds lethal injection
The 7-to-2 ruling is expected to end a de facto moratorium on executions nationwide.
By Warren Richey Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the April 17, 2008 edition
Washington - Lethal-injection procedures in Kentucky do not violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
In a 7-to-2 decision announced on Wednesday, the US Supreme Court upheld the injection procedures used by Kentucky officials to execute condemned prisoners. The majority justices ruled that the existing procedures do not pose a "substantial risk of serious harm."
The action opens the way for an end to a de facto national moratorium on lethal injection executions that has been in place since the fall.
In deciding the case, Baze v. Rees, the high court established a new, more rigorous constitutional test of execution methods under the Eighth Amendment. But the justices declined to embrace a significantly stricter constitutional test that lawyers for death-row inmate Ralph Baze had urged.
They had asked the high court to invalidate Kentucky's three-drug lethal injection protocol because, they said, it posed an unnecessary risk that Mr. Baze would endure an unacceptable level of pain and suffering.
In rejecting that standard, the majority justices said there is no Eighth Amendment requirement that a government-sanctioned execution be pain-free. The Eighth Amendment requires that an execution procedure not involve "a 'substantial' or 'objectively intolerable' risk of serious harm," writes Chief Justice John Roberts in the court's main opinion.
"A stay of execution may not be granted on grounds such as those asserted here unless the condemned prisoner establishes that the state's lethal injection protocol creates a demonstrated risk of severe pain," Chief Justice Roberts writes. "He must show that the risk is substantial when compared to the known and available alternatives."
Roberts adds: "A state with a lethal injection protocol substantially similar to the protocol we uphold today would not create a risk that meets this standard."
The plurality opinion, written by Roberts, was joined in full by only two other justices, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito. Justice John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Stephen Breyer concurred in the judgment only.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter filed a dissent. Justice Ginsburg said she would have remanded the case to the lower courts with instructions to consider whether the failure to include available safeguards in execution procedures creates an "untoward, readily avoidable risk of inflicting severe and unnecessary pain."
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by lawyers for Baze and a second death-row inmate, Thomas Bowling. The lawyers maintained that the lethal injection protocol used by Kentucky and other states involved too high a risk that personnel might botch the procedure and cause the condemned inmate to experience excruciating pain.
Thirty-six states and the federal government use lethal injection as the preferred method of execution.
Twenty states and the federal government filed friend-of-the-court briefs urging the Supreme Court to uphold Kentucky's lethal-injection program. Opponents of the death penalty urged the high court to set a high standard to reduce the risk of the kinds of botched executions that have taken place in several states. They said Kentucky's lethal-injection protocol did not meet minimal standards used to euthanize dogs and cats.
At the heart of the Baze case was a hypothetical scenario vividly portraying what Baze might experience if the execution protocol was not followed precisely.
Under the three-drug protocol used in Kentucky, the first drug administered is a barbiturate that is intended to render the inmate unconscious. Next, the inmate receives a dose of a drug that causes total paralysis. Finally, potassium chloride is injected to stop the heart.
The concern is that if the first drug fails to work properly the inmate will remain mentally aware as the other drugs are injected. Medical experts agree that a condemned inmate will endure unbearable pain and suffering from the injection of the potassium chloride. But because he has just been paralyzed by the second drug, the inmate will be unable to show any sign of distress. To an observer, the inmate may appear to have gone peacefully to sleep. But some experts say the inmate may, in fact, be fully conscious and in agony during his final moments of life.
At least two states, Missouri and Florida, have taken steps to prevent this scenario by requiring verification that the inmate is unconscious prior to the administration of the other two drugs. Critics say properly trained medical professionals are needed to ensure the procedure is as pain-free as possible. But ethics codes bar medical professionals from participating in executions.
In his plurality opinion, Roberts said Kentucky had established a number of safeguards to prevent botched executions. They included requiring members of the injection team to have at least one year of professional experience as a certified medical assistant or paramedic. In addition, the state requires the warden and deputy warden to be present in the execution chamber and available to watch for problems.
"In light of these safeguards, we cannot say that the risks identified by [the inmates] are so substantial or imminent as to amount to an Eighth Amendment violation," Roberts writes.
"Much of [the inmates'] case rests on the contention that they have identified a significant risk of harm that can be eliminated by adopting alternative procedures," he writes. But the Eighth Amendment does not require the invalidation of execution methods whenever a slightly or marginally safer alternative is identified.
"Permitting an Eighth Amendment violation to be established on such a showing would threaten to transform courts into boards of inquiry charged with determining 'best practices' for executions," the chief justice writes.
In his concurrence, Justice Stevens says he supported the plurality result because it was in line with Supreme Court precedent. But he urged his fellow justices – and the nation – to begin a reexamination of the death penalty."The time for dispassionate, impartial comparison of the enormous costs that death-penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits that it produces has surely arrived," he writes.
Justice Stevens said he believes the high court's decision in the Kentucky case will spark further litigation. "Instead of ending the controversy, I am now convinced that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol," Stevens writes, "but also about the justification for the death penalty itself."
Find this article at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0417/p01s06-usju.html
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Crapo
The Reagan administration actually did something right !
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guns23feb23,1,2283740.story?track=rss
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
February 23, 2008
WASHINGTON — In a victory for gun-rights advocates, the federal government is preparing to relax a decades-old ban on bringing loaded firearms into national parks.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Friday that his department would suggest new regulations by the end of April that could bring federal rules into line with state laws concerning guns in parks and public lands. His announcement came in a letter to Sen. Michael D. Crapo (R-Idaho), one of 50 senators who have written to him about the issue. Senators from both parties have backed a drive to repeal the ban, which has been in place in some parks for at least 100 years.
The proposed rule change would let visitors carry loaded weapons into national parks in states with few gun restrictions, such as Montana.
California is not one of those states. Its law prohibits loaded guns in state parks unless they are locked inside a car trunk or are similarly inaccessible. "It's a place of refuge, not a place for hunting, and it's patrolled by state park rangers who are there to protect visitors," California State Parks spokesman Roy Stearns said.
Gun rights advocates, notably the National Rifle Assn., have said the ban infringes on their 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms and their ability to defend themselves from predators, both human and animal.
"If you're hiking in the backcountry and there is a problem with a criminal or an aggressive animal, there's no 911 box where you can call police and have a 60-second response time," said Gary S. Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Assn.
Kempthorne's decision to review the ban was hailed by the NRA. "This is an important step in the right direction," said the organization's chief lobbyist, Chris W. Cox.
On the other hand, the National Parks Conservation Assn. called Kempthorne's action "alarming." Thomas C. Kiernan, the group's president, said loosening the ban would be "a blow to the national parks and the 300 million visitors who enjoy them every year."
His view is echoed by gun-control advocates and some rangers who say that permitting firearms would be dangerous for visitors and wildlife and would alter the national park experience.
"Parks have long been sanctuaries for both animals and people," said Charles R. "Butch" Farabee, a former acting superintendent at Montana's Glacier National Park who is retired. "There need to be places in this country where people can feel secure without guns and know that the guy in the campground across the way does not have one."
Although a federal rule change would not directly affect California, George Durkee, a board member of the U.S. Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police who works at Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks east of Fresno, worries about gun owners from other states: "Somebody who says, 'Oh, well, I can now carry a gun in national parks,' and doesn't read the fine print will just figure he can carry one in Yosemite."
The federal government would not cede authority over firearms in national parks to the states, said Interior Department spokesman Chris Paolino, but would like to reflect the policies of host states. Paolino said the department would also take into consideration the ban on firearms in federal buildings.
Weapons originally were prohibited in national parks to prevent "opportunistic poaching" of wildlife, said Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park, east of Palm Springs.
A 1908 Yellowstone National Park regulation, for example, required that visitors "having firearms, traps, nets, seines or explosives" surrender the weapons at the entrance unless they received written permission from the park superintendent. A similar policy was in effect at most parks for decades. Then the Reagan administration in 1983 required that visitors unload and store their firearms before entering most parks.
Supporters of the repeal effort note that state gun laws apply to federal land managed by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, and they think that should be the case in national parks and wildlife refuges as well.
Half of the Senate seems to agree. Nine Democrats and 41 Republicans have signed letters to Kempthorne calling on him to lift the gun ban. "We do not believe that allowing law-abiding citizens to transport and carry firearms -- rather than forcing them to disassemble or store them in their trunks -- will increase the chances that they will be tempted to violate prohibitions on discharge," one group wrote.
In campaigning to repeal the ban, the NRA hoped to add to a string of recent victories that included blocking an effort in Congress to give local law enforcement officials access to federal gun purchase data and a move in Virginia to require background checks for buyers at gun shows.
In a measure of the bipartisan support for relaxing gun laws, a majority of Congress -- 55 senators and 250 House members -- recently urged the Supreme Court to strike down the District of Columbia's handgun ban, one of the nation's strictest.
Advocates of allowing loaded guns in national parks believe it is foremost an issue of ending what they see as an unconstitutional infringement on their right to bear arms. But they also contend that park visitors are "increasingly vulnerable" to violent crime.
"While park rangers now use bulletproof vests and automatic weapons to enforce the law, regular Americans in states where conceal-and-carry law exists are denied the opportunity for self-defense," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said in "talking points" distributed by his office.
The National Park Service says there were 116,588 reported offenses in national parks in 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, including 11 killings, 35 rapes or attempted rapes, 61 robberies, 16 kidnappings and 261 aggravated assaults.
Supporters also think gun owners should be able to protect themselves against dangerous animals, dismissing arguments that firearms would ruin the park experience. "An attack, whether by an animal or a criminal, would degrade the experience of park visitors more," NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.
The park service said there were four bear attacks last year: two in Yellowstone, one in Sequoia and one in Grand Teton. There were none in 2006.
Officials at Glacier -- which recorded 10 deaths from grizzly bear attacks between 1967 and 1998 -- said the last attack was in 2005, when two hikers were mauled.
One of the victims, Johan Otter, an Escondido man who, with his daughter, was seriously injured, said the idea that a gun could have stopped the 400-pound bear that charged him is naive.
"We only had, like, half a second between seeing the bear and the impact," Otter said. "Most likely, if you shoot, you're going to hurt the animal. It's just going to get even more mad at you. The minute they're on top of you, there's no way you can pull a trigger."
Organizations that represent current and retired park workers oppose a repeal, saying it would endanger visitors, rangers and wildlife, and change the parks' character.
Bill Wade, executive council chairman of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said people could be discouraged from visiting certain parks, such as Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, where he served as superintendent. "How many of you would want to go out there if you knew that people were running up and down the Appalachian Trail with guns?"
richard.simon@latimes.com
judy.pasternak@latimes.com
From the Los Angeles Times
U.S. considers easing ban on guns in national parks
Advocates of change say it will improve safety. Opponents are convinced it would do the opposite.
By Richard Simon and Judy PasternakLos Angeles Times Staff Writers
February 23, 2008
WASHINGTON — In a victory for gun-rights advocates, the federal government is preparing to relax a decades-old ban on bringing loaded firearms into national parks.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Friday that his department would suggest new regulations by the end of April that could bring federal rules into line with state laws concerning guns in parks and public lands. His announcement came in a letter to Sen. Michael D. Crapo (R-Idaho), one of 50 senators who have written to him about the issue. Senators from both parties have backed a drive to repeal the ban, which has been in place in some parks for at least 100 years.
The proposed rule change would let visitors carry loaded weapons into national parks in states with few gun restrictions, such as Montana.
California is not one of those states. Its law prohibits loaded guns in state parks unless they are locked inside a car trunk or are similarly inaccessible. "It's a place of refuge, not a place for hunting, and it's patrolled by state park rangers who are there to protect visitors," California State Parks spokesman Roy Stearns said.
Gun rights advocates, notably the National Rifle Assn., have said the ban infringes on their 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms and their ability to defend themselves from predators, both human and animal.
"If you're hiking in the backcountry and there is a problem with a criminal or an aggressive animal, there's no 911 box where you can call police and have a 60-second response time," said Gary S. Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Assn.
Kempthorne's decision to review the ban was hailed by the NRA. "This is an important step in the right direction," said the organization's chief lobbyist, Chris W. Cox.
On the other hand, the National Parks Conservation Assn. called Kempthorne's action "alarming." Thomas C. Kiernan, the group's president, said loosening the ban would be "a blow to the national parks and the 300 million visitors who enjoy them every year."
His view is echoed by gun-control advocates and some rangers who say that permitting firearms would be dangerous for visitors and wildlife and would alter the national park experience.
"Parks have long been sanctuaries for both animals and people," said Charles R. "Butch" Farabee, a former acting superintendent at Montana's Glacier National Park who is retired. "There need to be places in this country where people can feel secure without guns and know that the guy in the campground across the way does not have one."
Although a federal rule change would not directly affect California, George Durkee, a board member of the U.S. Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police who works at Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks east of Fresno, worries about gun owners from other states: "Somebody who says, 'Oh, well, I can now carry a gun in national parks,' and doesn't read the fine print will just figure he can carry one in Yosemite."
The federal government would not cede authority over firearms in national parks to the states, said Interior Department spokesman Chris Paolino, but would like to reflect the policies of host states. Paolino said the department would also take into consideration the ban on firearms in federal buildings.
Weapons originally were prohibited in national parks to prevent "opportunistic poaching" of wildlife, said Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park, east of Palm Springs.
A 1908 Yellowstone National Park regulation, for example, required that visitors "having firearms, traps, nets, seines or explosives" surrender the weapons at the entrance unless they received written permission from the park superintendent. A similar policy was in effect at most parks for decades. Then the Reagan administration in 1983 required that visitors unload and store their firearms before entering most parks.
Supporters of the repeal effort note that state gun laws apply to federal land managed by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, and they think that should be the case in national parks and wildlife refuges as well.
Half of the Senate seems to agree. Nine Democrats and 41 Republicans have signed letters to Kempthorne calling on him to lift the gun ban. "We do not believe that allowing law-abiding citizens to transport and carry firearms -- rather than forcing them to disassemble or store them in their trunks -- will increase the chances that they will be tempted to violate prohibitions on discharge," one group wrote.
In campaigning to repeal the ban, the NRA hoped to add to a string of recent victories that included blocking an effort in Congress to give local law enforcement officials access to federal gun purchase data and a move in Virginia to require background checks for buyers at gun shows.
In a measure of the bipartisan support for relaxing gun laws, a majority of Congress -- 55 senators and 250 House members -- recently urged the Supreme Court to strike down the District of Columbia's handgun ban, one of the nation's strictest.
Advocates of allowing loaded guns in national parks believe it is foremost an issue of ending what they see as an unconstitutional infringement on their right to bear arms. But they also contend that park visitors are "increasingly vulnerable" to violent crime.
"While park rangers now use bulletproof vests and automatic weapons to enforce the law, regular Americans in states where conceal-and-carry law exists are denied the opportunity for self-defense," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said in "talking points" distributed by his office.
The National Park Service says there were 116,588 reported offenses in national parks in 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, including 11 killings, 35 rapes or attempted rapes, 61 robberies, 16 kidnappings and 261 aggravated assaults.
Supporters also think gun owners should be able to protect themselves against dangerous animals, dismissing arguments that firearms would ruin the park experience. "An attack, whether by an animal or a criminal, would degrade the experience of park visitors more," NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.
The park service said there were four bear attacks last year: two in Yellowstone, one in Sequoia and one in Grand Teton. There were none in 2006.
Officials at Glacier -- which recorded 10 deaths from grizzly bear attacks between 1967 and 1998 -- said the last attack was in 2005, when two hikers were mauled.
One of the victims, Johan Otter, an Escondido man who, with his daughter, was seriously injured, said the idea that a gun could have stopped the 400-pound bear that charged him is naive.
"We only had, like, half a second between seeing the bear and the impact," Otter said. "Most likely, if you shoot, you're going to hurt the animal. It's just going to get even more mad at you. The minute they're on top of you, there's no way you can pull a trigger."
Organizations that represent current and retired park workers oppose a repeal, saying it would endanger visitors, rangers and wildlife, and change the parks' character.
Bill Wade, executive council chairman of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said people could be discouraged from visiting certain parks, such as Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, where he served as superintendent. "How many of you would want to go out there if you knew that people were running up and down the Appalachian Trail with guns?"
richard.simon@latimes.com
judy.pasternak@latimes.com
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
Article licensing and reprint options
Article licensing and reprint options
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service
Home Delivery | Advertise | Archives | Contact | Site Map | Help
Home Delivery | Advertise | Archives | Contact | Site Map | Help
partners: 
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Ozymandias/Bush Bush/Ozymandias "Six of one ..."
'Ancient civilization . . . broken to pieces'
Illegal diggers are chipping away at Iraq's heritage at thousands of largely unguarded sites. The artifacts may never be returned.
By Alexandra ZavisLos Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 22, 2008
BAGHDAD — He works as a blacksmith in one of Baghdad's swarming Shiite slums. But at least once a month, Abu Saif tucks a pistol into his belt, hops into a minibus taxi and speeds south.
His goal: to unearth ancient treasures from thousands of archaeological sites scattered across southern Iraq.
Images of Baghdad's ransacked National Museum, custodian of a collection dating back to the beginning of civilization, provoked an international outcry in the early days of the war in 2003.
The ancient statues, intricately carved stone panels, delicate earthenware and glittering gold are now protected by locked gates and heavily armed guards. But U.S. and Iraqi experts say a tragedy on an even greater scale continues to unfold at more than 12,000 largely unguarded sites where illegal diggers like Abu Saif are chipping away at Iraq's heritage.
"It may well be that more stuff has come out of the sites than was ever in the Iraqi museum," said Elizabeth Stone, an archaeology professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Iraqi officials say the U.S. government has supported their efforts to retrieve looted antiquities from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Islamic and other civilizations, but they do not hide their bitterness that more was not done to secure them in the first place.
"Iraq floats over two seas; one is oil and the other is antiquities," said Abdul Zahra Talaqani, media director for Iraq's Ministry of State for Tourism and Archaeology. "The American forces, when they entered, they protected all the oil wells and the Ministry of Oil . . . but the American forces paid no attention to Iraq's heritage."
The thefts were already taking place before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, but U.S. and Iraqi experts say they surged in the ensuing chaos.
Abu Saif, a man in his mid-30s with dark eyes, calloused hands and a long, black coat, was 14 when relatives introduced him to the hunt for buried treasure. Asked why he does it, he grins.
"For the thrill of it," he said.
In the beginning, he was a lookout for others. Now, he has his own tightknit group of four or five diggers. He collects tips from farmers about possible archaeological sites and researches them in his small collection of dogeared books before traveling inconspicuously to meet his team and excavate. They work quickly, finishing a job in two to three days.
If they are successful, which they usually are, he shares the find with his diggers and the property owner. He considers what he does a hobby and says he sells only what he needs to cover costs. But he is vague about who the buyers are.
Talaqani says criminal gangs buy artifacts from men like Abu Saif and smuggle them out of the country. U.S. officials also suspect that Sunni and Shiite paramilitary groups may be taking a cut.
Abu Saif, who asked to be identified by a traditional nickname, admits that he once paid members of a Shiite militia to protect a site where he was digging. But a few hours later, another group of gunmen turned up and demanded more money. Now, he says, he refuses to deal with the militias.
He avoids the more famous sites such as the ancient cities of Isin, Shurnpak and Umma because "there are eyes upon them." But he says there are plenty of out-of-the-way places near Kut and Nasiriya that yield small treasures. The artifacts include coins, jewelry and fragile clay tablets etched in wedge-like cuneiform script, recording myths, decrees, business transactions and other details of Mesopotamian life.
At his two-story cinder-block home, he pulls out old jewelry boxes and rummages through spools of thread to find ancient gems of agate and carnelian. His most treasured possession is a thumb-sized cylinder with a man's face carved into one side and a woman's face into the other. An appraiser told him it was from Babylonian times and was worth as much as $4,000. Asked whether he planned to sell it, he looked horrified and said, "No, these are my children!"
Stone has been tracing the thefts at 2,000 sites in the south using DigitalGlobe satellite imagery. She estimates that looters have torn up about 167 million square feet.
"It's a huge amount of area," she said. "Archaeologists have dug just a tiny fraction of that."
She said small-scale digging began in the 1990s, when government neglect and a United Nations embargo pushed a large number of farmers into penury in the largely Shiite south, home to many of Iraq's richest archaeological sites. But in the weeks before the 2003 invasion, the images show holes spreading rapidly across many of the smaller and medium-sized sites.
Most of these places weren't touched again until the last months of 2003. But at the sites of some of the more important cities, there was a huge push that summer, which Stone said appeared far more systematic and organized than previous digging. Umma, a major Sumerian city that was partially excavated before the war, was turned into a moonscape. Afterward, the pace slowed considerably, though she has seen little imagery from 2007.
Taking advantage of an ebb in violence, the Iraqi government last year resumed its own excavations for the first time since the war started. It now has 11 teams on a salvage mission in southern Iraq. But almost everywhere they have been, illegal diggers have been before them, leaving devastation in their wake.
"What it takes us one month to dig, they do in one day, so you can imagine what damage they do," said Iyad Mohammed Hussein, whose team recently uncovered an oval-shaped temple dating to the Babylonian empire in Maysan province.
It isn't only artifacts that they are after. In Basra, residents dug up the foundations of old Islamic buildings and used the bricks to build their homes, said Mohammed Khaiyoon Nasir, who oversees excavations in the southern oil hub.
"I feel pain in my heart," said the diminutive man in a dark suit and spectacles. "This ancient civilization has been broken to pieces."
The loss is incalculable. It was here, in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, that human beings began to farm, etch words into clay, codify laws and build cities. Now, the records of that evolution are slipping away.
Stolen artifacts occasionally turn up on the market or in private collections. Last month, a 4,000-year-old inscribed clay tablet, which authorities suspect was smuggled from Iraq, was pulled from EBay's Swiss website minutes before the close of bidding. In 2006, Iraqi authorities were informed that a limestone head of a 2nd century BC king had been seized from the home of a Lebanese interior decorator and transferred to a museum for safekeeping.
But experts suspect that most of the stolen objects are hidden in warehouses around the world because they are too hot to sell.
The museum has recovered nearly 4,000 of the 15,000 pieces lost in looting triggered by the U.S. troops' arrival, some of the thefts spontaneous and some seemingly carefully planned. Initial reports that 170,000 artifacts had been stolen proved to be exaggerated.
Many were brought back to the museum by Iraqis taking advantage of a policy of accepting returns with no questions asked. They include such prized possessions as a 5,000-year-old limestone vase from the Sumerian city of Warka, which three men produced from the trunk of a car in the summer of 2003.
Most are now boxed up and locked behind iron gates in the museum's basement, waiting for a time when it will be safe enough to open to the public.
Recovering the artifacts looted from archaeological sites has proved far more difficult.
The government offers rewards ranging from about 10,000 Iraqi dinars ($8) to 5 million Iraqi dinars ($4,000), depending on the value of the items returned. But the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, worries that the program could be encouraging more illegal digging, said Mohammed Djelib, who heads the organization's Iraq office, located in neighboring Jordan.
Once the artifacts leave Iraq, officials say they are virtually powerless to retrieve them. Unlike museum pieces, items dug up illegally do not appear on an inventory and have no serial numbers etched into them. Without proof of the country of origin, the only way Iraq can get them back is to buy them, said Amira Eidan, the museum director and acting chairwoman of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.
A 3 1/4 -inch limestone lion believed to be from Mesopotamia recently sold at Sotheby's in New York for a record $57 million.
"Imagine how much money I would need to bring all these antiquities back to Iraq," Eidan said, wide-eyed, at her museum office.
The Iraqi government has formed a specialized guard force to secure archaeological sites. But at just 1,400 men, it is no match for the armed gangs responsible for much of the looting. UNESCO provided training and donated 37 vehicles to the project, Djelib said. But the guards said the well-appointed pickup trucks would make them targets, and refused to use them.
Donny George, the heritage board's charismatic former chairman, accused his bosses at the archaeology ministry of not doing enough to secure the sites. He alleged in media reports that the ministry had come under the influence of Shiite Islamists with no interest in safeguarding pre-Islamic sites, charges denied by Talaqani.
Efforts to protect Iraq's vanishing heritage foundered after George resigned in August 2006 and fled the country, during some of the war's worst bloodshed. But they have picked up again since September, when a new acting minister, Mohammed Abbas Oreibi, was appointed from former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's secular political bloc. The post had been vacant since April, when followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr quit the Cabinet.
In November, UNESCO held a conference of experts in Iraqi antiquities at which countries were urged to set up "safe havens" where recovered items could be stored until they could be returned to Iraq. Experts hope the initiative will encourage dealers to turn over any looted antiquities they are hiding, rather than destroy them.
But Djelib said it would take a more serious effort by Iraq's own government, its neighbors and the world at large to safeguard what he described as the heritage of humanity.
"It is difficult to talk about antiquities when people are dying, or they don't have water and electricity," he said. "But you can't wait for the situation to improve before deciding what to do, because by then it will be too late."
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
Times staff writers Usama Redha and Saif Rasheed contributed to this report.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
