ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq retrieved around 181 smuggled artifacts, the country's Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Antiquities said on Monday. The ministry accepted the artifacts in a signing ceremony at the foreign ministry headquarters, attended by Tourism Minister Ahmed Fakak al-Badrani and Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein. The repatriation of some artifacts was announced following Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani's visit to the United States in April. According to the tourism ministry, the artifacts were returned to Baghdad aboard the presidential plane. Among the returned items were a bronze figure of a man and eight metal boxes containing skeletons. The artifacts had been smuggled to Los Angeles in the 1990s from a site in historic Nimrod, located in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province. The ceremony also saw the return of artifacts from Washington, Jordan, Norway, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Badrani added that his ministry will continue efforts to recover other national artifacts smuggled to various countries. Iraq's cultural artifacts have faced persistent looting and vandalism since the US invasion in 2003, a situation exacerbated by increased theft through waves of destabilization, culminating with the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014. In recent years, Iraq has made significant efforts to recover and repatriate these lost antiquities. While visiting England for the coronation of King Charles III last May, Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid arranged the return of 6,000 artifacts which were taken by Britain a century ago. Later that month, the Iraqi foreign ministry announced they repatriated over 34,000 artifacts since 2019 from various countries around the world. Reporting by Didar Abdalrahman
