Trafficker sentenced to way too little federal prison for looted Syrian mosaic

A California man who illegally imported a Roman mosaic looted from Syria has been sentenced to three months in federal prison after being convicted on one count of entry of falsely classified goods. The maximum possible penalty was two years in federal prison. Even that would have been going way too easy on him. The charge is that he lied on customs forms to import an illegally acquired object, which he certainly did, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the filth he was wallowing in when he trafficked this 3rd/4th century floor mosaic.

The timing is what struck me as particularly disgusting. In August of 2015, Mohamad Yassin Alcharihi, who is of Syrian origin, smuggled a Syrian mosaic into California during the period when ISIS was actively engaged in the destruction and traffic of Syria’s ancient heritage for profit. Literally the same month that Khaled al-Asaad was tortured and executed, sacrificing his life to save the cultural patrimony of Palmyra, this … person … only saw the slaughter and cultural erasure as an opportunity to make a buck.

A quick summary of the charge he was sentenced for: Alcharihi declared to his customs broker that the shipment contained 81 modern vases and ceramic tiles from Turkey worth a total of $2,199. In actual fact, he had paid $12,000 for an ancient mosaic that he had declared to customs was nothing but “ceramic, unglazed tiles” valued at $587.

The false classifications occurred months after the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the destruction of cultural heritage in Syria, particularly by the terrorist organizations Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Nusrah Front.

The mosaic was placed inside a large metal shipping container holding many vases and two other mosaics. An x-ray image of the container taken by CBP showed that the mosaic was hidden in the front of the container – away from the rear access doors – behind a pile of vases. After passing through customs, the mosaic was shipped via truck to Alcharihi’s home in Palmdale, California.

Alcharihi then spent $40,000 to have the mosaic restored so he could resell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but before he could arrange the sale, FBI and Homeland Security agents executed a search and seizure warrant on Alcharihi’s home on March 19, 2016. The mosaic was found in his garage and confiscated.

(As a mildly entertaining aside, the forfeiture portion of a case is structured as the government versus the object being confiscated, so going through the court motions you get to read things like: “IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that upon the arrest of the defendant One Ancient Mosaic….”)

The mosaic is 15 feet long, eight feet tall and weighs one ton. It depicts Herakles liberating the Titan Prometheus who had been chained to a rock on the Caucasus Mountains, condemned by Zeus to have a giant eagle eat his liver all over again every day for the transgression of having stolen fire from Olympus and given it to humanity. In this scene, Hercules is about to shoot his arrow into the eagle, while Zeus and another figure (Hermes?) watch from a cloud. To the left is a woman with child looking backwards as they flee, probably from the eagle. There’s a missing section on the left side between the leg of the woman and the partial eagle. I’m guessing the gap in the tesserae originally a tree, balancing the one on the right, that anchors Prometheus’ chains.

I’m not sure who the woman is. My potentially cockamamie theory is it’s Io with her son by Zeus, Epaphus. In the version of the myth recounted by Aeschylus in his tragedy Prometheus Bound, Io encounters the chained Prometheus who foretells her future. In the play, Io is no longer in human form when she meets Prometheus, and her son isn’t born yet. She’s been transformed by vengeful Hera into a heifer and hounded by the goddess’ minions until she reaches Egypt where she is finally restored to her human form and gives birth to Zeus’ son, which is what Prometheus told her would happen. I think the mosaic is compressing different parts of the myth, a compositional technique which people who saw the mosaic back then would have recognized.

After his arrest, Alcharihi quickly admitted under questioning that he had indeed falsified the customs information, that the mosaic was ancient, not modern tile, and that he had paid 12 grand for it, not less than $600, and that he had poured another $40,000 into the restoration with the prospect of selling it for much more than that. A government expert who examined the mosaic estimated its market value at $450,000.

Even with him readily confessing to the one crime he was ultimately convicted of, four years passed between the seizure of the mosaic and the indictment. Another three years passed between indictment and trial. Finally, a year after that, on August 28, 2024, he was sentenced. The mosaic is still in secure storage in Los Angeles where it will remain until repatriation is arranged.

This was going to be a single post, but after reading a number of court documents and being flabbergasted at the many stages of sheer stupidity behind so foul a crime, I’ve decided to split it into two. The full background story and chronology of events deserves its own spotlight. Tune in tomorrow for the sequel: Sometimes, Evil Is Just Really, Really Dumb.

* This article was originally published here