Istanbul - Turkish police are questioning four men who were arrested in Istanbul at the weekend as they tried to sell two paintings attributed to Pablo Picasso to undercover officers for $2.8 million.
One of the paintings was of a clown and the other of a female nude. The three men who were arrested include the nephew and the bodyguard of a controversial Turkish member of parliament. Mr Mustafa Bayram, the MP, was also at the scene but escaped arrest by claiming parliamentary immunity.
Mr Bayram has drug-smuggling charges pending against him, and there have been demands to remove his immunity from prosecution. Eight paintings attributed to Picasso have been recovered by the Turkish authorities in the past year. But they are a mystery. Five of them now hang on the freshly painted walls of a small room in Turkey's state art museum. They were seized from smuggling gangs and dealers in southern Turkey last year in a series of sting operations.