The United States has returned more than 1,400 looted artifacts worth US$10 million to India as part of an ongoing initiative to repatriate stolen art from countries across South and Southeast Asia, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office announced Wednesday. The trafficked goods recovered include items that, until recently, were on view at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among them is a sandstone sculpture of a celestial dancer that was smuggled from central India to London, before being illegally sold to one of the Met’s patrons and donated to the museum. The repatriations resulted from “several ongoing investigations” into looting networks, including those operated by convicted art traffickers Nancy Wiener and Subhash Kapoor, an American antiquities dealer who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for running a multimillion-dollar looting network through his New York gallery, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said in press release. Kapoor was sent to face charges in India’s Tamil Nadu state following his arrest in Germany in 2011. The DA’s office obtained an arrest warrant for him in 2012 although he remains in custody in India, pending his extradition to the U.S. “Today’s repatriation marks another victory in what has been a multiyear international investigation into antiquities trafficked by one of history’s most prolific offenders,” William Walker, the federal Homeland Security Investigation’s New York special agent in charge, said in a press statement. The items were formally returned at a ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York on Wednesday. Since its creation over a decade ago, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit — a task force of lawyers, investigators and art experts — has recovered 5,800 antiquities valued at almost US$460 million. The unit has also convicted 16 people of trafficking offenses and filed for the extradition of six others linked to stolen cultural property. In July, the U.S. and India signed an agreement to protect cultural property by preventing illegal trades and streamlining the process of returning stolen antiquities back to India.(SD-Agencies) 美國曼哈頓地區檢察官辦公室上周三宣布，美國已向印度歸還了 1400 多件被掠奪的文物，價值1000 萬美元。這項歸還南亞和東南亞各國被盜藝術品的行動還在繼續。 部分追回的被盜物品直到最近還在紐約大都會藝術博物館展出。其中一件天體舞者的砂巖雕塑是從印度中部走私到倫敦的，后來被非法賣給了大都會博物館的一位贊助人，并捐給了博物館。 曼哈頓地區檢察官辦公室在新聞稿中說，這些文物的歸還源于對走私盜竊網絡 “正在進行的幾項調查”，其中包括由被判有罪的藝術品走私犯南希?維納和蘇巴什?卡普爾經營的網絡。古董商卡普爾因通過自己紐約畫廊經營價值數百萬美元的走私網絡被判處10年監禁。 卡普爾 2011 年在德國被捕后，被送往印度泰米爾納德邦接受指控。檢察官辦公室于 2012 年獲得了對他的逮捕令，但他仍被關押在印度，等待被引渡回美國。 聯邦國土安全調查局紐約特別主管威廉?沃克在一份新聞聲明中說：“今天的歸還標志著對歷史上最臭名昭著的古董走私犯罪的又一次勝利，這是多年國際合作調查的結果。” 這些文物已于上周三正式歸還，當時在印度駐紐約領事館舉行了一個儀式。 由律師、調查員和藝術品專家組成的曼哈頓地區檢察官調查文物走私小組自十多年前成立以來，已追回 5800 件文物，價值近 4.6 億美元。該小組還判定16人犯有走私罪，并申請引渡其他6 名與被盜文物有關的嫌疑犯。 今年7月，美國和印度簽署了一項協議，通過防止非法交易和簡化返還印度被盜文物的程序來保護文化遺產。 (Translated by Debra) | 