Iraqi artifacts funding terrorists?

To be taken with a mountain of salt, given the speaker and the informal context of the claim:

Money from the sale of stolen artifacts in Iraq is being used to fund terrorist activity there, the director of Iraq's National Museum told experts at a UNESCO meeting Thursday.

``Rich people are buying stolen material. ... Money is going to Iraq and they're buying weapons to use against Iraqi police and U.S. forces,'' Donny George said on the sidelines of the gathering called to assess the state of Iraq's cultural heritage.

``This money is going to the terrorists.''

George told a news conference that of 15,000 objects stolen from the museum, almost 4,000 had been returned to the country and more than 4,000 others were being kept in neighboring countries for safekeeping.

Posted by David on June 23, 2005 1:35 PM