Mon 19 October 2020:
France on Thursday officially handed over to the Moroccan authorities nearly 25,000 archaeological objects, which had been seized in France during three customs controls and which illustrate the “scourge” of looting of cultural property, according to officials.
The artefacts were handed over in a ceremony held at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM) in Marseille, where Morocco’s Consul General in the city, Said Bakhkhar, received the items.
“This handover testifies to the common will of our two countries to form a united front against the illicit trafficking of cultural property within the framework of our respective international commitments in the matter,” said Chakib Benmoussa, Morocco’s ambassador to France.
“This is a historic moment because we can repatriate this heritage to find his native land,” said Youssef Khiara, national director of Moroccan heritage.
“The event of 2005 set in motion a process in Morocco,” he added. Since then, the Moroccan authorities have trained customs, magistrates in order to have “qualified human resources to deal with the theft and trafficking of art.
Among the 24,459 returned artefacts are fossils, trilobites, teeth, animal skulls and jaws, carved tools and arrowheads.
The items date back some 500,000 million years from the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.
The haul also includes neolitic cave engravings, a crocodile skull still partly in its gangue and fish teeth from the second Paleogenic era.
The return of the items follows efforts from Morocco’s Ministry of Culture aimed at combatting the illicit trafficking of historical artefacts.
It comes in accordance with the two states’ commitment to the 1970 UNESCO Convention for the prohibition and prevention of the import, export and transfer of cultural property.
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