[MSN] Precious artefacts vanish from Zimbabwe museum

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Precious artefacts vanish from Zim museum 

    June 01 2006 at 02:39PM  
 
Harare - More than 1 500 artefacts "disappeared" from the Zimbabwe Museum of
Human Sciences last year, prompting an international police search, local
reports said on Thursday.

The artefacts, worth billions of Zimbabwe dollars are believed to have been
smuggled out of the country, the state-controlled Herald newspaper revealed.

Senior staff at the museum, which is located in central Harare, may be
behind the theft, the paper added.

"The quantity alone should be a cause for concern to the organisation as the
number is over 1 500 objects," a confidential audit conducted earlier this
year said.

Interpol is now involved in trying to recover the missing artefacts, said
the report.


"We managed to get information that some of the items have been illicitly
exported. We actually sent a group of investigators, accompanied by
Interpol, to check on the suspected destinations of the objects," Godfrey
Mahachi, the director of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe was
quoted as saying.

The paper quoted unnamed sources at the museum saying that senior staff
members at the museum might have been behind the thefts because they "really
appreciated the value of the artefacts."

The museum's collection dates back to 1903 and has objects of archaeological
and ethnographic interest. - Sapa-dpa  

http://www.iol.co.za/