WASHINGTON, April 24: US officials said on Wednesday they have charged one former Fox News employee and were investigating some returning journalists after seizing 15 paintings, gold-plated guns and other items taken from Iraq and smuggled into the United States.
In the past week US customs and immigration officials have seized paintings taken from the palace of one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, found a cache of gold-plated weapons taken from an Iraqi government facility and confiscated Iraqi bonds, knives and other spoils of war.
Most of the people caught smuggling the items were reporters returning from covering the war in Iraq. But the gold-plated weapons were believed to have been looted by a member of the US military and were in a shipment bound for a US military base in Fort Stewart, Georgia.
“The people who saw these golden guns as a golden opportunity will now find themselves facing stiff penalties and the full force of our criminal justice system,” Gordon England, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said.
“It is a crime to either bring or to ship stolen property into the United States,” added England, standing in front of two huge canvases confiscated from returning journalists.
None of the items seized so far are among the priceless antiquities and art treasures looted from the Iraqi National Museum following the collapse of Saddam’s government.
But officials said regardless of their aesthetic value, they have a resale value in the United States — at least on the black market.
“The relative worth of these items is really not the point. They should be repatriated to the Iraqi people,” said Michael Dougherty of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Whether the person doing the looting is looking for a windfall or a souvenir, they are stealing and we will use our authority to stop them and bring them to justice.”
TV TECHNICIAN’S LUGGAGE: So far only one person has been charged — Benjamin Johnson, a satellite truck engineer for the Fox News Channel — for smuggling goods into the United States and for making false statements to customs officials.
According to a criminal complaint, inspectors at Dulles International Airport in Virginia searched Johnson’s luggage and found 12 Iraqi paintings and undeclared Iraqi bonds.
The complaint said Johnson originally told US officials he had been given the paintings but later said he had taken several of them from Iraqi presidential palaces and the residence of Saddam’s son Uday Hussein. He also bartered with a US soldier for two other paintings.
Fox said in a statement it had fired Johnson after learning what he had done.
Johnson gave officials information that led them to stop Boston Herald reporter, Jules Crittenden, when he returned to the United States at Logan International Airport. Officials seized a painting and a wall ornament.
Herald publisher Patrick Purcell said in a statement that Crittenden had cooperated fully with Customs agents.
Officials said they had seized paintings and other goods from several other reporters returning through Dulles. They gave no details but said they were still investigating.
Marvin Kalb, senior fellow at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University said there is a long tradition of war bounty.
“Soldiers have been doing this for thousands of years and journalists have been doing it for a long time,” he said. But he noted there was a difference between picking up a trinket and taking home an item that is more valuable like a painting. —Reuters
