Correspondent Anderson Cooper and a workforce visited the world-famous Khmer temple Angkor Wat, in addition to a number of different distant temples, to analyze how this decades-long artwork heist was carried out.
“Lots of these temples have been closely looted over a long time, starting within the genocide within the Nineteen Seventies,” Cooper defined in an interview with 60 Minutes Overtime.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist group, took over Cambodia. About 2 million Cambodians had been killed or starved to dying below the regime.
In 1979, the Khmer Rouge misplaced energy, however the combating continued for many years. The instability left Cambodia’s temples unprotected and weak to plunder that was usually carried out by former Khmer Rouge baby troopers. Priceless artifacts stolen from these temples would then find yourself within the palms of unscrupulous antiquities sellers.
Brad Gordon, an American lawyer employed by the Cambodian authorities to trace down and return these treasures, calls them “blood antiquities.” The commerce in looted antiquities was a harmful one which led to violence and homicide.
“People had been killed over these antiquities,” he stated. “Whenever I see a statue, I feel, ‘Who died to get this out of the bottom, or get it out of a temple, and to maneuver it right here?'”
Gordon took Cooper and 60 Minutes to a distant temple on Sandak Mountain, one of the vital closely looted websites in Cambodia.
“It’s like one thing out of an Indiana Jones movie,” Cooper stated. “It’s a crumbled temple…and it is fully in a forest. It’s overgrown.”
Cooper stated indicators of looting had been throughout. Pedestals the place statues as soon as stood littered the bottom. The severed ft of statues remained the place they had been hacked off from the physique.
During their investigation, Gordon and his workforce realized that Sandak Mountain could have been looted for a selected motive. Archaeologists and students found from transcriptions that big quantities of gold had been delivered to the temple.
A breakthrough got here when Gordon met a former Khmer Rouge baby soldier, Toek Tik, who was codenamed “Lion” for his security. He described discovering tons of of jars scattered all through the positioning crammed with jewellery like crowns, necklaces and earrings.
A primary suspect of their investigation was Douglas Latchford, a British antiquities vendor who specialised in Cambodian artifacts.
Latchford revealed three books, one among which was titled “Khmer Gold: Gifts of the Gods,” which confirmed pictures of gold and jewellery that had by no means been seen by Cambodians earlier than.
When Gordon confirmed the ebook to Toek Tik, he was shocked. He pored over the ebook with Gordon and his investigators and acknowledged most of the items he had looted, and informed them the place they went, main them proper again to Latchford.
Little is but recognized in regards to the jewellery and its significance, however Gordon believes that the jewellery was as soon as worn by the kings and queens of an historic Khmer Empire that spanned Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, and existed for tons of of years.
At Angkor Wat, Gordon and one among his investigators did a side-by-side comparability of the reliefs masking the temple partitions to the jewellery in Douglas Latchford’s ebook for Anderson Cooper and the 60 Minutes workforce.
“And you may take a look at the reliefs…that present pictures of historic Khmer kings from this historic Khmer empire,” Cooper defined. “And you may see what seems to be very related [to], if not precisely, those self same jewels.”
Over a number of years, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York had been capable of construct a case in opposition to Latchford for the theft of Cambodian antiquities, however Latchford died earlier than he could possibly be extradited from Thailand to face trial.
Gordon traveled to the U.Okay. to satisfy Latchford’s daughter Julia. They ate at a pub exterior of London. After lunch, she took Gordon to the car parking zone, opened the trunk of a automotive, and began taking out historic Khmer jewellery from Tupperware bins.
“That’s the place you are feeling like historical past’s bigger than your self. I simply felt like, ‘Wow, unbelievable that it is sitting right here in a car parking zone,'” Gordon informed Cooper.
In a take care of the Cambodian authorities, Latchford’s household agreed to return his whole assortment, together with the gold and jewellery.
The jewels had been welcomed dwelling in an elaborate ceremony with conventional blessings by Buddhist monks. Cambodians in attendance had been capable of see the traditional crowns, rings, earrings and necklaces in particular person for the primary time.
Cooper requested Gordon what the return of these jewels meant for Cambodians.
“They went via genocide,” he stated. “I feel it is restoration of nationwide delight.”
The video above was initially revealed on December 17, 2023. It was produced and edited by Will Croxton.
Photos courtesy of Thomas Cristofoletti and Getty Images.
