Yemeni artifacts smuggled by Brooklyn antiquities dealer to be returned

The Smithsonian Institution is retuning 77 Yemeni artifacts smuggled into the country by a shamed antiquities dealer, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.

The relics, some of which date back to the 1st century B.C., will remain at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Art in Washington D.C. for the next two years at the request of Yemen’s government.

The collection includes 64 carved stone heads, 11 Qur’an manuscript pages, a bronze inscribed bowl, and a funerary stele, or carved stone, from tribal cultures in northwest Yemen, prosecutors said.

The stolen antiquities were seized from former dealer Mousa Khouli, who arranged to smuggle the goods between October 2008 and November 2009, according to a 2012 news release.

The dozens of stolen carved stone heads have been in the possession of the U.S. government for over a decade. Other antiquities forfeited by Khouli after his guilty plea were repatriated to Egypt in 2015.

In a statement, Yemen Ambassador Mohammad Al-Hadhrami thanked the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art for temporarily holding on to the antiquities in the two-year custodial agreement.

The repatriation marks the the largest number of antiquities that have been returned by the U.S. government to Yemeni officials in nearly 20 years.