Daesh Made $200 Mln Selling Palmyra Artifacts
Local Editor
Militants from Daesh [the Arabic acronym for the terrorist "ISIS" group] earned around $200 million from selling unique Palmyra relics.
The group's extremists didn't just demolish the World Heritage site, the city of Palmyra that they seized last year, they had also been successfully trading the city's unique relics while in control of the territory.
According to Fox News reports citing Russian investigators, Daesh garnered around $200 million from the process.
The archeological wonder with 2,000-year-old ruins, located amid the Syrian desert, was eviscerated by the group's terrorists last year.
However, on March 27, the Syrian army, backed by allies, fully liberated Palmyra after ten months of terror and devastation. The city is a strategic crossroads linking the Syrian capital, Damascus, with the country's east as well as the border with Iraq.
During the Daesh reign in the city, several assets of significant heritage were destroyed by the Takfiri group, including two large 18-century temples and a 2,000-year old Roman-era Arch of Triumph.
The amphitheater dating back to the same epoch was used by the militants for public executions. Meanwhile, the major part of the city is reportedly still lying in ruins.
In this regard, the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said in a letter released Wednesday that Daesh had a special subdivision focused on trading antiquities.
Relatively, the Turkish city of Gaziantep is the center "for the smuggling of cultural heritage items," Churkin wrote, goods there are "sold at illegal auctions and then through a network of antique shops and at the local market."
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
