- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.
officials said on Wednesday they have charged one former Fox News employee
and were investigating some returning journalists after seizing 15 paintings,
gold-plated guns and other items taken from Iraq and smuggled into the
United States.
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- In the past week U.S. customs and immigration officials
have seized paintings taken from the palace of one of Saddam Hussein's
sons, found a cache of gold-plated weapons taken from an Iraqi government
facility and confiscated Iraqi bonds, knives and other spoils of war.
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- Most of the people caught smuggling the items were reporters
returning from covering the war in Iraq. But the gold-plated weapons were
believed to have been looted by a member of the U.S. military and were
in a shipment bound for a U.S. military base in Fort Stewart, Georgia.
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- "The people who saw these golden guns as a golden
opportunity will now find themselves facing stiff penalties and the full
force of our criminal justice system," Gordon England, deputy secretary
of the Department of Homeland Security, said.
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- "It is a crime to either bring or to ship stolen
property into the United States," added England, standing in front
of two huge canvases confiscated from returning journalists.
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- None of the items seized so far are among the priceless
antiquities and art treasures looted from the Iraqi National Museum following
the collapse of Saddam's government.
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- But officials said regardless of their aesthetic value,
they have a resale value in the United States -- at least on the black
market.
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- "The relative worth of these items is really not
the point. They should be repatriated to the Iraqi people," said Michael
Dougherty of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Whether
the person doing the looting is looking for a windfall or a souvenir, they
are stealing and we will use our authority to stop them and bring them
to justice."
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- 12 PAINTINGS FOUND IN TV TECHNICIAN'S LUGGAGE
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- So far only one person has been charged -- Benjamin Johnson,
a satellite truck engineer for the Fox News Channel -- for smuggling goods
into the United States and for making false statements to customs officials.
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- According to a criminal complaint, inspectors at Dulles
International Airport in Virginia searched Johnson's luggage and found
12 Iraqi paintings and undeclared Iraqi bonds.
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- The complaint said Johnson originally told U.S. officials
he had been given the paintings but later said he had taken several of
them from Iraqi presidential palaces and the residence of Saddam's son
Uday Hussein. He also bartered with a U.S. soldier for two other paintings.
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- Fox said in a statement it had fired Johnson after learning
what he had done.
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- Johnson gave officials information that led them to stop
Boston Herald reporter, Jules Crittenden, when he returned to the United
States at Logan International Airport. Officials seized a painting and
a wall ornament.
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- Herald publisher Patrick Purcell said in a statement
that Crittenden had cooperated fully with Customs agents.
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- Officials said they had seized paintings and other goods
from several other reporters returning through Dulles. They gave no details
but said they were still investigating.
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- Marvin Kalb, senior fellow at the Shorenstein Center
on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University said there
is a long tradition of war bounty.
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- "Soldiers have been doing this for thousands of
years and journalists have been doing it for a long time," he said.
But he noted there was a difference between picking up a trinket and taking
home an item that is more valuable like a painting.
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