U.S. Scholar Gets House Arrest in Iraq Looting

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041122/ap_on_re_us/brf_iraqi_artifacts_arrest&cid=519&ncid=1480

NEW YORK - An expert on Iraq (news - web sites)'s postwar reconstruction was sentenced Monday to six months under house arrest and two years of probation for trying to smuggle into the United States 4,000-year-old artifacts stolen from Iraq's national museum in the chaos after the U.S. invasion.

Joseph Braude, 29, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Allyne Ross in August to smuggling and making false statements. Braude could have gotten 16 years in prison.

Braude is a Middle East expert fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi. For years he had assisted the FBI (news - web sites) and CIA (news - web sites) with counterterrorism efforts.

When he returned from Iraq last summer, Braude was stopped by customs agents at Kennedy Airport after he failed to declare he was carrying three ancient marble and alabaster seals. He also briefly denied that he had been to Iraq.

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[NYC Liberal]

1. But...but...Rummy said that's just what free people do!

[Book Lover]

2. Too tempting, eh Joe?

I understand why, but we're scholars, Joe, remember? Rise above the fray; critical distance; objects belong in the public field of scholarship...

[Benhurst]

3. He should have gotten the 16 years-- served as community

service, teaching the poor kids in the slums.

How disgraceful! A crime not only against the Iraqi people; but mankind as a whole.

[Book Lover]

4. I agree to a point

I don't know if I'd throw him in prison for 16 years, but I think 1 or 2 would be just; then a nice long spate of community service. The hands that fashioned these objects have been still for thousands of years, but he just had to possess them all for himself...

[snippy]

5. Was this one of the people who attended the White House meeting

prior to the invasion seeking a decision from the LordGodBush that neither Iraqi law concerning antiquities nor the US law concerning stolen art objects would apply to Iraqi artifacts liberated during the invasion?

[this_side_up]

6. Bet a dollar when someone asks where

they are currently located, the answer will
be.....we don't know! They disappeared and the
paperwork is a mess.

Don't worry; trust us; we'll find 'em.

And that will be the end of that subject.