FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jamal Abdi
Phone: 202-386-6408
Email: [email protected]
Washington, DC – National Iranian American Council applauds the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois protecting the Persepolis Tablets and other ancient Iranian artifacts from being awarded as damages in a court proceeding.
“This is a victory that protects the culture and history of the Iranian people so that these antiquities can be appreciated by everyone,” said NIAC President Trita Parsi. “Iran’s heritage is owned by the people, it is not the property of Iran’s government and it cannot be treated as currency.”
The Persepolis Tablets provide the world’s only first-hand window into daily life in Persepolis 2,500 years ago. But these and thousands of ancient Persian artifacts in the United States were under the threat of seizure as part of a judgement against the Iranian government.
Since 2006, NIAC has been a leading voice in the Iranian-American community’s efforts to protect the Persepolis Tablets and other Persian antiquities in the United States. NIAC filed an amicus brief in the case in 2008 and also advocated to the White House as well as in Congress to protect the tablets.
The items at University of Chicago and other universities and museums were under threat as part of civil suit in response to a 1997 Hamas attack. While the court found that Iran’s government was responsible for the attack by allegedly providing material support to the bombers, plaintiffs have been unable to collect the entirety of a $400 million judgment awarded in damages. Thus, lawyers attempted to seize Persian artifacts on display at various museums, including the Persepolis Tablets collection that has been at University of Chicago since the 1920s.On Friday, the Judge presiding over the case in Illinois ruled that the Iranian government did not own the artifacts at the Chicago Field Museum and that the artifacts at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute were loaned for scholarship instead of commercial purposes so could not be seized. While the decision can now be appealed, NIAC hopes that this will definitively protect these items and will continue to ensure this is the case.
“The Iranian-American community supports justice for all victims of the Iranian government, and indeed nobody has suffered more than the Iranian people,” said Parsi. “But going after museums and seizing antiquities representing the history and identity of the Iranian people would have meant using one injustice to perpetuate another injustice that would have set a devastating precedent.”
In addition to the Persepolis Tablets at the University of Chicago, Persian artifacts at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, the University of Michigan’s Museum of Art and Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Harvard University, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Previous decisions have been made in those cases to protect those items as well.