Manhattan prosecutors return 59 antiquities to Italy, Iraq and Indonesia

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the return of 59 antiquities valued at over $600,000 to Italy, Iraq and Indonesia on Wednesday, with the items handed over at three ceremonies.

Italy received the largest share, with 48 objects worth over $300,000, 45 seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bragg’s office said the pieces were recovered through multiple criminal investigations into trafficking networks and that the museum had acquired them from Robert Hecht, Jonathan Rosen and Fritz Burki.

Those works were handed over at a ceremony with Giuseppe Pastorelli, Italy's consul general in New York, and Brigadier General Antonio Petti, commander of the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.

"Today's repatriation by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office stands as a tangible symbol of the fruitful, long-standing collaboration with the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage," Petti said.

Among the returned Italian objects is a terracotta psykter-column-krater attributed to the Troilos Painter and dated 480 to 470 B.C. Burki smuggled it out of Italy, and it was restored by Sandro Cimicchi.

It was consigned for sale at Christie's in London before entering the Met, where prosecutors seized it earlier this year. The museum's website notes that it "was restituted in June 2026" and "is no longer in the museum’s collection."

"This vase is the only known preserved example of a combination psykter and column-krater," the Met's website reads.

Also returned was a marble fish plate from Magna Graecia dated roughly 400 B.C. Hecht sold the plate in 1984, and it stayed at the Met until this year's seizure, the office said.

Iraq received nine antiquities worth nearly $300,000 at a ceremony with Duraid Abbas, deputy chief of mission of Iraq to the United States.

Two of them were Sumerian gypsum male and female worshippers dated to Iraq's Early Dynastic II period, roughly 2750 to 2600 B.C. The office said both surfaced on the market in 2015 when Ariadne Galleries sold them as part of the "Rihani Family Collection."

Prosecutors later seized and returned 11 antiquities that Hassan Rihani smuggled out of Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Syria, the office said. The two worshipper statues reappeared this year at an auction house under a revised provenance, the "R. Family Collection." Prosecutors identified them as stolen and obtained a seizure warrant in June.

Iraqi officials said last July that more than 40,000 artifacts had been repatriated to the country in recent years amid ongoing efforts to recover them.

And Indonesia received two preserved human skulls from the Dayak people of Borneo, valued at about $15,000, at a ceremony with Winanto Adi, consul general of Indonesia in New York. The office said the skulls were smuggled out of the country and seized in 2024.

"The continuity of this cooperation reflects something far greater than the return of valuable objects," Adi said. "It reflects the trust, mutual respect, and shared values that have long characterized the friendship between Indonesia and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office."

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