It was March 20, at Baghdad airport. In the suitcases of James Fitton, 66, a retired British geologist, customs officers get their hands on a dozen stones, pieces of pottery and old ceramics. In those of Volker Waldmann, a 60-year-old German psychologist, two similar fragments. The two men are returning to Europe after taking part in an organized trip. They have been incarcerated for more than two months (their trial scheduled for May 22 has been adjourned) and are due to appear on Monday June 6 under a 2002 law that says anyone found guilty “to have intentionally released or attempted to release an antique” of Iraq faces the death penalty.
British geologist James Fitton and Berlin psychologist Volker Waldmann are heading towards a Baghdad court where they face trial over allegations that they attempted to smuggle shards of broken pottery from the country.
Sabah Arar/AFP pic.twitter.com/kqyMh4UCjk
— Kurdistan 24 English (@K24English) May 22, 2022
They plead good faith: no one had told them that picking up a few pieces from the ground was illegal. Moreover, on the sites visited there were no warning signs or fences. Volker Waldmann even pointed out to the courts that he had wrapped the fragments in a transparent plastic bag, so he had no intention of hiding them. A profile of unscrupulous tourists, of course, but not of traffickers. Except that they will be judged as such. Iraq protects its cultural heritage After decades of war and chaos, after Islamic State jihadists who embarked on large-scale antiquities trafficking to replenish their coffers, after the pandemic that saw the activities looting on the rise, Iraq has seriously taken back the protection of its cultural heritage.
The authorities target organized networks of course, they also negotiate with institutional actors. Last year, the United States returned 170,000 antiquities stolen after the 2003 invasion. In February, a private Lebanese museum returned more than 300 cuneiform tablets as the earliest traces of human writing. More and more tourists But Baghdad also seeks to educate tourists. Which are not very numerous (and above all there is no infrastructure yet); but last year Iraq considerably relaxed the conditions of entry into its territory for 36 countries; it is a question of “encouraging investments” of course, but also tourism. For those who want to discover the national museum, reopened two months ago, which concentrates all that Iraq has in terms of testimony to its past as the cradle of civilisations; or the magnificent Ishtar Gate, which guards one of the eight entrances to the ancient capital of Babylon, erected by the Mesopotamians more than 4,000 years ago.
In front of the Ishtar Gate, at the archaeological site of Babylon, Ileana Ovalle poses for a photo. Like her, dozens of Europeans and Americans are setting off to discover Iraq, which is slowly opening up to world tourism https://t.co/PShHXeGQOp #AFP pic.twitter.com/3T7OFoWKQz
– Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) March 29, 2022
Picking up a fragment lying around in the dust to make a souvenir of it may seem trivial… except that repeated by thousands of people, it undermines the integrity of the site. There are too many people who believe they can take pieces of history with them in their suitcases with impunity… A problem that all archaeological sites are experiencing. In Pompeii, in 2018, a French couple received a four-month suspended sentence and a 200-euro fine for having piled fragments of terracotta and a piece of marble in their backpack. James Fitton and Volker Waldmann will obviously not be sentenced to death today, but they risk paying dearly for their indelicacy. For example.