The US Court of Appeals has overturned the verdict by lower courts in a long running case, that ordered two Chicago museums to hand over Iranian artefacts as compensation for American victims of a 1997 Hamas bombing. I still struggle to understand the logic that this entire case is based on – as the compensation seems entirely disconnected from the actual events – and if such a case is successful might lead the way for ever more spurious artefact seizures, making museums more reluctant to lend to US museums.

From:
CAIS

University of Chicago and Museums Win Key Ruling in Legal Battle Over Iranian Antiquities
Wednesday, 30 March 2011 00:30
By David Glenn

LONDON, (CAIS) — Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute won a victory on Tuesday in their efforts to maintain possession of thousands of ancient Iranian artifacts. In a ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a lower court’s order that might have handed the artifacts over to several American victims of a 1997 terrorist bombing in Jerusalem.

Those victims won a $90-million judgment in 2003 against the government of Iran, which is claimed to have allegedly financed and trained the Arab terrorists who carried out the Jerusalem bombing. But the victims and their families have struggled to collect any of that judgment from Iran, and their lawyers have sought instead to seize purported Iranian assets in the United States, including antiquities held in American museums. Those legal efforts have been condemned by some scholars as a dangerous politicization of the world’s archaeological heritage.
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In a case that very similar to a previous one, moves are underway to seize Iranian artefacts on loan to the US to compensate for a terrorist attack in Beirut twenty five years ago. I still remain unclear about exactly how the law can be implemented in this specific way & whether its right that it should be.

From:
Reuters

US terrorism claimants compete for Iranian assets
Thu May 29, 2008 6:27pm EDT
By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO, May 29 (Reuters) – Families of those killed in the Beirut Marine barracks bombing 25 years ago staked their claim on Thursday to ancient Persian clay tablets, on loan to a U.S. museum, to satisfy a $2.7 billion judgment won against Iran.

Iran’s government, declared a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States for its support of militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, has largely ignored civil suits seeking compensation for victims of Middle East attacks engineered by the two groups.
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The remains of over one hundred of their ancestors have been returned to the Haida First Nations tribe in Canada by Chicago’s Field Museum.

From:
Times Colonist (Canada)

The Homecoming
Haida rejoice as ancestral bones return to rest
Jack Knox
Times Colonist

OLD MASSETT, Queen Charlotte Islands – They carried the 46 boxes of bones out of St. John’s Anglican church and drove them to the cemetery Saturday — past the totem poles towering out of the earth, past the hip and funky Haida Rose Cafe, past the weather-beaten homes with the red Haida Nation flags drooping in the rain.

Not a long drive, certainly not as long as the long haul to Chicago, from where the Haida just retrieved the remains of close to 150 ancestors snatched from their resting places in the name of science a century ago. The bones had spent the last 100 years packed away in the Field Museum of Natural History, where they had been taken after being scooped up by anthropologists.
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Chicago’s Field Museum is to return bones that were previously dug up from cemeteries on the Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia.

From:
Chicago Sun Times

Field returning bones to native group
March 26, 2003
BY NANCY MOFFETT STAFF REPORTER

The Field Museum will return bones–mostly skulls–from about 160 native people who lived, logged and fished from islands off the coast of British Columbia.

The remains were dug up from cemeteries on the Queen Charlotte Islands and brought to Chicago in the early 1900s. Such returns represent one of the hottest international issues for museums.
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