The British police have confirmed that they are examining an Iraqi cigar case belonging to London mayor Boris Johnson, in order to determine whether it is a looted Iraqi artifact. Johnson handed over the case on Monday.
Johnson took the case in 2003 from the bombed-out home of former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz.
Johnson was then working as a journalist, and had been taken to Aziz's ransacked villa. He is quoted in The Daily Telegraph:
"And there, just by my toe, protruding from beneath a piece of dusty plywood, was the cigar case.....the circumstances in which I came by this object were so morally ambiguous that I cannot quite think of it as theft."
He added, rather ruefully:
"Well, I suppose we should be grateful for one thing, it seems that a Western politician is finally going to pay the price for his involvement in the Iraq war."
Much a do about nothing!
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