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Özgen Acar/Cumhuriyet Gazetesi, Turkey

Turkish citizen Aydin Dikman was suspected of smuggling antiquities out of northern Cyprus as early as the 1970s, but he managed to elude arrest until last fall. In October and November 1997, German police and Interpol officers raided three Munich apartments owned by Dikman—arresting him (he is currently undergoing trial in Germany) and seizing thousands of artworks and artifacts, mostly from northern, Turkish-controlled Cyprus. The police also found notebooks with drawings of the interiors of churches in northern Cyprus, plotted with lines allegedly indicating where walls should be cut to remove their sacred art.