The Libyan leadership agreed with the British authorities to return the statue of Persephone, which is estimated at 1,800 years old, which was transported by smugglers from Libya to Britain, against the backdrop of the ongoing civil war there.
This came in a statement published by the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs on its website.
The statement said: “On April 13, a ceremony was held at the Libyan embassy in London to hand over the Persephone statue, which was transported by smugglers to Britain in 2011.
The statement also indicated that a special protocol was signed between the Chargé d’Affairs of the Libyan Embassy in London and the head of the Department of Ancient Greeks and Ancient Rome in the British Museum, Peter Hugo.
The Libyan Foreign Ministry stated that the process of restoring the statue was a long one and required many legal, political and other measures to be taken.
It is noteworthy that the ancient statue of Persephone was transported during the civil war from the Libyan city of Cyrene in northeastern Libya, after it was included by the United Nations UNESCO in the World Heritage List.
In December 2013, the British customs confiscated the statue, which was estimated at 1.5 million pounds (2.1 million dollars), after it was discovered in a warehouse at London International Airport, where the Jordanian Riyad Al-Qassad tried to sell it for 100.6 thousand dollars, saying that the statue was carved in the 17th century AD. .
In 2015, the Westminster Court in London decided to return the statue to the Libyan authority.
Source: TASS