'Monuments Men': New Army Unit Aims To Protect Ancient Treasures
A special unit to protect or retrieve ancient treasures has been formed by the British Army.
The 15-strong Cultural Property Protection Unit is made up of reservists from all three services with what the Royal Navy say has "a flair for Indiana Jones-style adventure".
The need for such a specialist unit is largely due to the so-called Islamic State, which has destroyed numerous historic sites in the Middle East, including Iraq’s Nimrud palace, mosques in Mosul and certain Roman ruins in Palmyra.
The unit will be tasked with retrieving works stolen by terrorists, investigations into looting, the protection of ancient objects and reporting on sites of interest to the British military.
Restricting the flow of money to terrorist organisations will also be a key objective.
Lieutenant Colonel Tim Purbrick, who served in the Gulf War before becoming an arts dealer, is the unit’s commander and said: "Looting and selling antiquities has been proven as a fund-raising method for terrorist groups."
"Part of our job is about preventing 'threat finance' – you have an adversary extracting cultural property from the region you are operating in and then, in effect, sending it back at you in the form of bombs and bullets."
Video: Forces News spoke with Lt Col Purbrick about the special unit which was set up to protect or retrieve ancient treasures.
People with backgrounds as curators, art specialists, archaeologists and investigators were urged to consider signing up.
"Our staff could find themselves out on an exercise doing operational planning or sitting at a border, checking vehicles for stolen artefacts," said Lt Col Purbrick.
"There’s a strong possibility we’ll be working with allies such as the French out in somewhere like Mali where they are trying to prevent antiquities being smuggled out of the country."
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