The United States will return 30 looted antiquities to Cambodia, including bronze and stone statues of Buddhist and Hindu deities carved more than 1000 years ago.
Skanda on a Peacock is among the works. Photo: AFP / US Attorney's office Southern District of New York
The country's archaeological sites - including Koh Ker, a capital of the ancient Khmer empire - suffered widespread looting in civil conflicts between the 1960s and 1990s.
Cambodia's government has since sought to have stolen antiquities returned.
Damian Williams, the top US federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said the items being returned were sold to Western buyers by Douglas Latchford, a Bangkok dealer who created fake documents to conceal looting and smuggling.
Williams said the antiquities, including a 10th-century sandstone statue depicting the Hindu god of war Skanda riding on a peacock, were voluntarily relinquished by US museums and private collectors.
"These statues and artefacts … are of extraordinary cultural value to the Cambodian people," Williams said.
US prosecutors in 2019 charged Latchford, a dual citizen of Thailand and the US, with wire fraud and smuggling over the alleged looting. He died in Thailand in 2020.
The antiquities will be displayed at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's US ambassador Keo Chhea told Reuters.
In 2014 US federal prosecutors returned the Duryodhana, a looted 10th-century sandstone sculpture, to Cambodia after settling with the Sotheby's auction house.
In 2021, the Manhattan district attorney's office returned 27 looted antiquities to Cambodia.
-Reuters