Inside ICE: Volume 2, Issue 12

ICE Returns Antiquities to Afghanistan

The people of Afghanistan regained an important part of their culture and history May 23 when ICE Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia returned two 2,000-year-old coins that had been recovered by ICE to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Assistant Secretary Garcia returned the cultural antiquities, which had been stolen from the Afghan people, to President Karzai in ceremonies at the Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. President Karzai was in Washington, D.C., for meetings with President Bush.

The rare Indo-Greek coins of Agathokles are dated between 171 and 160 B.C. Only six of these coins are believed to exist, making them extremely rare and valuable to collectors. But as artifacts of history for the Afghan people, they are priceless.

“What a great day!” President Karzai exclaimed when receiving the coins. “There is a memory in Afghanistan, and that memory is living. We like to connect that memory of the past to a better future for our country, a future of peace and prosperity.”

Some aspects of the coins’ recent history remain shrouded in mystery. First discovered by a French archeological expedition in 1971, the coins were part of a collection of some 30,000 coins that were looted from the Afghan National Museum by either Mujahideen or Taliban factions in the late 1980s.

In September 2003, a confidential informant provided information to ICE Boston’s Office of Investigations and claimed that one ancient Afghan coin had been brought into the United States from Pakistan and was in the possession of a man living in Maryland.

ICE Baltimore Special Agents Ray Abruzzese and Alex Miris were assigned the case. Abruzzese and Miris located the subject in Burtonsville, Md., and questioned him about the coin.

The Maryland broker admitted that the owner gave him the coins in late 2002 in order to broker a sale. The broker said that after receiving the coins he did extensive research on them to try and determine what their value might be on the open market. That research, the broker said, led him to believe the coins were stolen.

Despite that fact, the broker admitted trying to sell the coins after learning they were stolen. His efforts were unsuccessful, however, because legitimate coin collectors also believed the coins were stolen and refused to buy them, knowing they could never claim ownership or publish their acquisition.

The broker claimed that he tried without success to return the coins to the owner. When that failed, the broker said, he put the coins in a safe deposit box at a bank in Maryland, and the coins were still there.

Abruzzese and Miris took the broker to the bank, where he retrieved the coins from the safety deposit box and voluntarily turned them over to the ICE agents. ICE held the coins while they were being authenticated and until arrangements could be made to return them to the Afghan people.

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Freedom and Heritage

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Inside ICE is an e-newsletter produced by the ICE Office of Public Affairs to inform the public about the mission, operations and activities of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Please send comments and contributions to Russ Bergeron, Editor.

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