Witness Urges Protection of Antiquities in New ISIS Territories

DePaul University Law Professor Patty Gerstenblith tells members of a Task Force on Terrorist Financing of the House Financial Services Committee that Syria and Northern Iraq are rich in are facts judging over millennia, from King Hammurabi to the prophet Jonah with influence on the Greeks, Christianity, Islam and civilizations. Gerstenblith says that when artifacts are taken, entire sites are destroyed permanently. Gerstenblith explains that deferring legal systems across jurisdictions in the trade of antiquities make it more difficult to track and prosecute those crimes, explaining that as the largest art market in the world, the United States is a target for sales of looted goods despite difficulties in assessing the value of illegally traded objects just escalated and with no documented history.