(USDOJ) Lawyers Go to Cambodia Over Statue

Two lawyers from the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan traveled into the Cambodian jungle this week to inspect an ancient, crumbling temple as part of their office’s effort to seize a 10th-century Khmer statue that Sotheby’s hopes to sell at auction.

The unusual four-day trip is the latest development in a court case involving the auction house and United States officials, who are trying to help Cambodia gain possession of the statue, which it contends was looted from the temple during the chaos of that country’s civil war.

Though United States officials have intervened on behalf of foreign governments in patrimony cases, experts on cultural heritage law said it was rare for federal lawyers to visit an archaeological site abroad as part of such an effort.

Sharon Cohen Levin, the chief of the United States Attorney Office’s Asset Forfeiture Unit, and a second federal lawyer, Alexander Wilson, spent Wednesday at the temple’s remote location after first meeting with Cambodian officials in Phnom Penh.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/arts/design/united-states-officials-travel-to-cambodia-in-statue-case.html?pagewanted=all