ROME, June 25: Italy handed back to Pakistan on Monday almost 100 rare artefacts dating from as long ago as 4,000 BC that had been brought illegally into the country and were found at a 2005 antiques’ fair.

Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli returned the well-preserved archaelogical treasures: a number of vases, bowls, terracotta statuettes, figurines, musical instruments and coins to the Pakistani ambassador.

Experts from the National Museum of Oriental Art in Rome had established that some of the 96 pieces came from Balochistan, and others from the Indus Valley region, the culture ministry said.

They were discovered in a batch of 310 objects at an antiques’ fair in Lombardy, a city in northern Italy. The artefacts had been smuggled into Italy from Thailand, according to General Giovanni Nistri, Italy’s police official for cultural affairs.—AFP