Marbles must be settled in court

Published on Friday 27 June 2008 15:42

NEWS that the multi-millionaire founder of EasyJet, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, is set to launch a personal campaign for the reuniting of the Elgin marbles by placing adverts in newspapers is interesting, but hardly a new idea ('EasyJet founder gets Elgin marbles campaign rolling', June 15).

Various bodies have diplomatically campaigned for years to have the Parthenon Marbles reunited with the Parthenon. These diplomatic attempts have all ended in failure and much as I admire Stelios for trying, I fear his attempts will share the same fate.

Most well-meaning people or groups trying to engineer a return of the Parthenon Marbles seem to forget that they were stolen in the first place by the British ambassador who then lied to Parliament about the theft.

The downright lies and theft by our ambassador can not be dealt with diplomatically – would we negotiate with a burglar who had stolen from our house for a temporary return of our belongings? The matter of the looting of these treasures from a country under occupation should be dealt with by the courts in a similar manner to Nazi booty.

Tom Minogue, Dunfermline