British man gets 15 years for smuggling artifacts
Harsh sentence stuns retired geologist, others
BAGHDAD – A British citizen was sentenced Monday by an Iraqi court to 15 years in prison after being convicted of attempting to smuggle artifacts out of the country, in a case that has attracted international attention.
The verdict handed down to retired geologist Jim Fitton, shocked the court in Baghdad, including his defense attorney. He and his family have argued that Fitton, 66, had no criminal intent.
“I thought the worst case scenario would be one year, with suspension,” Fitton’s lawyer Thair Soud, visibly shocked, told The Associated Press.
Soud said Fitton would appeal the verdict.
A German national tried with Fitton was found not to have had criminal intent in the case and will be released.
Judge Jabir Abd Jabir found that, according to the government’s investigation, Fitton had criminal intent to smuggle the artifacts that he had picked up and intended to transport them out of the country.
The trial has grabbed international attention at a time when Iraq seeks to open up its nascent tourism sector. The two men first appeared in court on May 15 wearing yellow detainees’ uniforms, telling judges they had not acted with criminal intent and had no idea they might have broken local laws.
Fitton said he “suspected” the items he collected were ancient fragments, but that “at the time I didn’t know about Iraqi laws,” or that taking the shards was not permitted. Fitton said as geologist he was in the habit of collecting such fragments as a hobby and had no intention to sell them.
Fitton and the German national, Volker Waldman, were arrested at Baghdad’s airport on March 20 after airport security discovered the items in their luggage. They had been part of a tourism expedition around the country’s ancient sites.
Their tour guide, also a British citizen who was in his 80s and in poor health, died in police custody for reasons unrelated to his detention. He was found with over 20 archaeological fragments in this possession.
Fitton’s family grew worried when he did not arrive on a scheduled flight back to Kuala Lumpur, where he resides with his wife, on March 20. They later learned that Fitton, a well-traveled geologist for oil and gas companies, had been taken to an airport holding cell where he was still being detained, Fitton’s daughter Leila told the AP last month.
In total, 12 fragments of pottery and other shards were found in Fitton’s possession by Iraqi authorities, all of them collected as souvenirs, Fitton’s family says, during a group tourism expedition to Eridu, an ancient Mesopotamian site in what is now Dhi Qar province. The site is said to be among the oldest sites belonging to that civilization.
Controversy, however, remains about the items that Fitton had picked up. A report by the Iraqi Culture Ministry stated they were over 200 years old, without offering any further explanation about their provenance. But any item less than 1,500 years old disqualifies it from being
from antiquity.