MORE ON THE LOOTING of the Hebrew archives in the French National Library: This case has been quiet for a while, but it figures in this Observer (i.e., Sunday Guardian) piece on the larger problem of looted antiquities in the hands of collectors and museums.

Europe bids to halt tide of art smuggled to America

Court cases aim to break the billion-pound global trade in stolen antiquities that end up with wealthy US collectors and museums

Felix Lowe, Jason Burke in Paris and Barbara McMahon in Rome
Sunday January 22, 2006
The Observer

A series of legal actions has been launched by European governments to regain priceless works of art which they claim have been illegally smuggled to America to be sold off to wealthy collectors and museums.

One of the highest profile cases is in France, where what has been dubbed 'The Affair of the Hebrew Manuscripts' is reaching its climax. The case centres on Michel Garel, a specialist in ancient documents at the National Library in Paris, who is alleged to have systematically pillaged medieval religious texts to satisfy a demand from America. One manuscript, a 600-year-old French Hebrew version of the biblical books of the Pentateuch, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and the Lessons of the Prophets, has been traced to a New York collector who bought it for £200,000 at Christie's. Garel, who maintains his innocence, is to appear before a French court on theft charges.

Agnes Saal, the library's director, said: 'The National Library is motivated by a strong desire to recover this manuscript so that it can once more take its place as part of the national heritage.'

[...]