Late last year Cyprus welcomed home 32 Byzantine treasures looted from Orthodox churches in the northern third of the island since the Turkish occupation of 1974.
Among the items returned was the priceless, sixth-century mosaic medallion of the Apostle Judas from the church of the Virgin of Kanakaria, as well as 25 frescoes, dating from the ninth to 16th-century, from other churches and monasteries.
The major frescoes were those of the Tree Of Jesse, showing the lineage of Jesus, and the Last Judgment, stolen from the church of Antiphonitis in 1976. The Kanakaria mosaic, which was originally curved to fit into the dome of the church, had been flattened while the three-bythree metre frescoes had been sectioned so they could be peeled off the walls of the church and transported.
"Some sections still remain on the adhesive cheesecloth backed with canvas used to remove them," Dr Athanasios Papageorgiou told The Irish Times on his return to Nicosia from Munich, where he had been cataloguing the find. A former director of the Antiquities Department, he is now serving as Byzantine expert to the Cyprus Church.
Dr Papageorghiou said that another 220 pieces - icons, frescoes and mosaics - should be restored to Cyprus early this year. The Bavarian police, who discovered the treasure in four apartments in Munich, valued the hoard at £20 million sterling on the illegal art market. The search continues.
The tale of how these lost treasures were found and returned began last March with a Dutch art dealer and the Cyprus honorary consul in the Hague. The dealer was Michael Van Rijn, who claims descent from the painter Rembrandt; the consul was Tasoula Georghiou Hadjitofi, a refugee from the Turkish occupied port city of Famagusta where Shakespeare's Othello is set.
Mr Van Rijn approached Ms Hadjitofi in 1988 and offered to negotiate financial deals for objects stolen from Cyprus, in exchange for immunity from prosecution and expenses.
Ms Hajitofi admitted that Mr Van Rijn was as wary of what she represented as she and the authorities were of him. After retrieving an important icon of the Archangel Michael from a Rotterdam cardiologist, on information provided by Mr Van Rijn, an element of trust was established. Next he enabled the Cypriot authorities to lay claim to the "Royal Doors" of the church of Peristerona which he had sold to Kanazawa College of Art in Osaka, Japan.
"Last year he approached me and said he would help to get everything back to the last icon," Ms Hajitofi stated. "Time was running out for Cyprus . . . our only option was to trust Van Rijn . . . he is a genuine expert on Byzantine art," so he knew the field, particularly what was Greek and what Cypriot. The church and half a dozen wealthy Cypriots were persuaded to provide £312,000 sterling to finance a carefully calculated "sting" operation to recover a hoard of stolen Cypriot art, as the first stage in this campaign.
The target of the "sting" was Aydin Dikmen, a Turkish dealer in antiquities with whom Mr Van Rijn had parted company. The Greek Cypriot authorities had long had their eye on Mr Dikmen.
In 1988 he and Mr Van Rijn had sold four of the Kanakaria medallion mosaics to a US art dealer, Peg Goldberg, for over $1 million. When she offered the mosaics to the Getty museum in Los Angeles the curator called the cops and an Indianopolis court returned the mosaics to Cyprus.
It was after this case that Mr Van Rijn offered to work with Cyprus while Mr Dikmen continued his European dealership. With the co-operation of Ms Hadjitofi, Mr Van Rijn set up purchases, through middlemen, from Mr Dikmen.
The first item recovered was the seventh Kanakaria mosaic, of Judas. The second transaction, the "sting", for the purchase of the two church frescoes, was mounted in midOctober under the auspices of the Munich police and observed by a British journalist. "It was just like James Bond," asserted Ms Hajitofi - reallife James Bond, involving the takeover of an entire floor in a major Munich hotel, hidden cameras, buying up some of Mr Dikmen's employees, deep secrecy, the ominous threat of violence.
More than two months later she admits she is still reeling from the tension. Once his agents had completed the "sting" transaction, Mr Dikmen was arrested and his flat raided. During the initial search 35 items were found, hidden in secret compartments in ceilings and walls; another 30 boxes of artifacts were stored in the basement. Three more flats, occupied only by treasures - Russian, Mexican, Colombian and Indian as well as Cypriot - were raided.
Mr Anastasios Panagiotou, the Cyprus police officer in charge of the case, said some rooms were stacked to the ceilings with art and documents. Mr Dikmen remains in custody, with a 15-year prison sentence ahead of him if convicted of dealing in stolen art. So far, he has refused to cooperate or hire a lawyer to represent him.
Dr Papageorghiou said Mr Dikmen supplied galleries in Britain, Germany, Holland, Austria and Switzerland with stolen art from round the world. "The Cypriot artifacts he handled were looted soon after the Turkish invasion and stored in Kyrenia castle from where they were shipped to Munich for sale - with the collusion of the archaeologists responsible and the authorities. . . There is only one entrance to the castle which is under Turkish army control. . . All those who co-operated with Dikmen became millionaires," observed Dr Papageorghiou. "Unfortunately the most important icons have not been found. They have been sold and are now in private collections where they cannot be traced and recovered. . .
"All but five of the 500 churches in the north have been looted," he said. "The five are displayed to visitors. Ten have been demolished, the rest are used as toilets, storehouses, clubs and cinemas. . . all have been desecrated. Silver and gold are sold as metal. Only the hand remains of a mosaic of the Archangel Gabriel. UNESCO has done nothing. . . A mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe paid a three-day visit several years ago but it only went to a few of the most well known churches." Even its damning report did nothing to stop the trade in looted art.
Michael Van Rijn is the author of the book Hot Art, Cold Cash published by Little, Brown in 1993.