Five people arrested in Sulaimani for stealing ancient holy books

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Sulaimani’s internal security forces (Asayish) arrested a group of five people suspected of stealing ancient holy books worth tens of thousands of dollars, it said on Monday. 

According to the statement from Asayish, a copy of which was sent to Rudaw, the five people smuggled a Bible and a Torah from southern Iraq into the city of Sulaimani, and were planning to smuggle it out of the Kurdistan Region.

The books are believed to be thousands of years old, made of animal skin and written in gold ink, it added.

Video published by Asayish show the stolen books, with Christian symbols seen on the Bible and gems on the Torah. 

On Friday, Baghdad’s Anti-Crime Directorate announced the arrest of four suspects for stealing an antique Jewish book from Iraq’s national museum.

Iraqi antiquities were subjected to looting and vandalism after 2003, the most severe of which was in 2014 when the Islamic State (ISIS) occupied large swathes of the country. 

Antiquities were damaged in Nineveh province after ISIS took control of the archaeological areas there and destroyed and sold thousands of artifacts in the global market through intermediaries.

Statistics indicate ISIS earned an estimated $36 million from trading Iraqi antiquities, the Supreme Judicial Council said in an October report.

For those artifacts unharmed, neighboring Turkey became part of a smuggling route for their black market sale to art collectors worldwide.