| Thursday , August 20 , 2015 |
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150820/jsp/frontpage/story_38173.jsp#.VdXNvNSqqko
Palmyra scholar beheaded | |
| Louisa Loveluck | |
 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said today that 82-year-old Khaled al-Asaad, long-time director of the Palmyra museum, was beheaded in a local square before his body was hung from the Graeco-Roman ruins. The archaeologist had been detained and interrogated for over a month by the IS, Abdulkarim told Reuters. The militants had wanted to extract information about the whereabouts of precious Palmyra antiquities which had been removed as the extremist group advanced on the city. But they have ruled with an iron fist. The sandy amphitheatre, one of the ancient city's most famous sites, has been re-purposed as a stage for executions. Public squares have been turned into forums from which the militants trumpet their latest diktats, and a site for their brutal punishments. Asaad spent most of his life working to promote and protect Palmyra. Abdulkarim described him as "one of the most important pioneers in Syrian archaeology in the 20th Century". He had worked with US, French, German and Swiss archaeological missions on excavations and research in Palmyra's famed 2,000-year-old ruins, a Unesco World Heritage Site that includes Roman tombs and the Temple of Bel. Since sweeping to power throw large chunks of Syria and Iraq last year, the IS have damaged some of the region's most priceless archaeological treasures. Unesco said in July that one fifth of Iraq's estimated 10,000 official sites had been heavily looted under IS control. Some sites in Syria had been ransacked so badly they no longer had any value for historians and archaeologists, Unesco said, describing the damage as "cultural cleansing". The IS has established a "ministry of antiquities" to maximise the profits from looting priceless artefacts across the territory it controls. The trade has raised tens of millions of dollars for the IS - a sum comparable to the profit the terrorists have made by the kidnap and ransom of western hostages. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH |