Iraq: British man gets 15-year jail term for smuggling artefacts
Al JazeeraAPR 3 2022
The items Fitton collected were of no material or archeological value. It's ludicrous he is being charged with smuggling, and it's blatantly obvious that the judge has failed to apply the law correctly. This is an unjustly severe punishment.
Iraq's smuggling laws have developed in direct response to decades of looting, some of which US forces were complicit in when deployed to the country starting in 2003. Iraq has more than 25k archeological sites and not enough security resources to protect them, hence the country's current focus on extreme punitive measures to deter future theft.