'How Assad's man got a priceless antiquity out of Canada and into Syria

A man Ottawa deemed unfit to be honorary consul is being celebrated in Damascus for ‘repatriating’ a 5th century Byzantine mosaic to Bashar’s blood-drenched regime (Terry Glavin, 'How Assad's man got a priceless antiquity out of Canada and into Syria' Macleans.ca Oct 12, 2019)

Waseem Ramli, the notorious Montreal businessman whose diplomatic status as honorary consul for the blood-drenched Baathist regime in Syria [...] walked out of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with a priceless 1,820-kilogram late 5th century Byzantine Christian mosaic measuring roughly 3.5 meters by 2.8 meters originally from the vicinity of Hama on the Orontes River, [...]  But Canadian officials raised no objections at all to surrendering the Early Christian artwork to the Syrian Arab Republic, Maclean’s has learned. [...] It’s now at the Syrian National Museum in Damascus. The massive mosaic came from a shipment of 82 mosaic fragments that the Syrian regime exported illegally in the late 1990s, likely in connivance with the smugglers themselves. The collection was intercepted by the RCMP and Canada Customs officials, and the artifacts were eventually returned to Syria, except for the Hama mosaic. Although it had been cut into two pieces, apparently for ease in transport, the mosaic was so magnificent that McGill University professor John Fossey, the Montreal museum’s curator of Greek art at the time, managed to arrange a loan of the work for display at the museum. The loan was extended several times, starting in 2004. [...]  On Dec. 29 last year, Ramli walked into the museum, presented a letter from the Syrian government, and demanded that the museum surrender the Hama mosaic to him.  [...] There was a bit of a rigmarole, but Ramli’s demands were all met within six months. [...]  Global Affairs Canada didn’t give the museum a choice. Nobody said no. Nobody even said, hold on, maybe we should just say no, this belongs to the Syrian people, not to the criminal regime in Damascus. So Goldfarb and his colleagues had little option but to comply with Ramli’s demands and hand over the Hama mosaic.