TEHRAN -- President Hassan Rouhani visited an exhibition at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran on Saturday of a collection of 349 Persian artifacts, which Belgium sent back to Iran after a legal battle that lasted 33 years.
Rouhani’s special aide, Hossein Fereidun, and Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization Director Masud Soltanifar along with a number of cultural officials accompanied him during the visit.
In an address, Rouhani congratulated the Iranian people for the recovery of artifacts.
He called the collection invaluable and said that recovering the artifacts is “a clear manifestation of Iranians’ will and the capability of the country’s legal sector in protecting the rights of the Iranian people.”
“The objects, which belongs to our ancestors, show us the plan that we should have for the future and how to use the experiences of the past,” he added.
“Organizing the exhibitions, which showcase the ancient civilization of Iran, could relieve notably the atmosphere of Iranophobia in the world,” he stated.
The collection, which consists of pottery and metal artifacts, arrived in Tehran on December 25, 2014.
The artifacts had been excavated from a 4000-year-old ancient site near the village of Khorvin, over 60 kilometers west of Tehran.
With the help of a Belgian diplomat, Yolande Wolfcarius-Maleki, a French national who acquired Iranian nationality by marriage in 1965, transferred the artifacts to Belgium 35 years ago.
Wolfcarius-Maleki loaned the collection to the Department of Archaeology at Ghent University. In 1981, Iran filed a lawsuit in Brussels court against the French woman after being informed about artifacts at the university.
Subsequently, the artifacts were confiscated pursuant to the court’s ruling and the collection was transferred to the Cinquantenaire Museum until the court reached its final decision.
Wolfcarius-Maleki died, but her heirs pursued the case.
In 1998, the court rejected Iran’s claim on the artifacts. However, Iran filed an appeal in a court in Liège, where Wolfcarius-Maleki’s heirs won the legal case.
Iran filed an appeal in the supreme court of Liège and the court reversed the lower court’s order in October 2014 and ruled that antiquities must be sent back to Iran.
MMS/YAW
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