IRAN: Mysterious disappearances of bronze statues in Tehran prompt police probe

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Over the last weeks, several busts of famous Iranian figures worth thousands of dollars have mysteriously vanished from their pedestals in central Tehran one by one.

First, a statue of the renowned Iranian poet Shahriar disappeared. Then the busts of two prominent figures in Iran’s 1906 constitutional revolution as well as a Persian lexicographer went missing.

Iranian police are now launching an investigation into the incidents after a 10th bust disappeared from Tehran’s central Behjatabad Park on Monday.

The target this time: the 9th century physician and philosopher Avicenna, who was of Persian origin.

“The Tehran attorney general is looking into the capital’s serial statue thefts,” Tehran prosecutor General Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi was quoted as telling reporters by Iran’s state-owned English-language Press TV.

Iranian media reports say that most of the statues are believed to have been stolen during the Persian New Year holidays, Norouz, which began in late March and ended in early April.

The thefts have become the latest talk of the town. Theories abound on who could be behind the serial thefts.

Mojtaba Mousavi, a Tehran municipal official, suggests the thieves might have targeted the statues -- worth between $12,000 and $50,000 each -- to melt down into bronze and resell.

Sculptor Jamshi Moradian told Babylon & Beyond that he thought the plunderers might be motivated by the high prices paid for some bronze statues at exhibitions in Persian Gulf art markets like the one in Dubai.

‘Some of the bronze statues are sold for as much as $25,000 or more,’ he said. ‘For example Parviz Tanavoli (a famous Iranian sculptor) sell in high prices internationally. Perhaps they steal the statues and smuggle them out to sell later, in Dubai or somewhere else, when the dust of today settles down.’

Twenty-four-year-old art student Parisa theorizes that the statues’ theft might be acts of vandalism by the Iranian opposition.

‘Perhaps it’s a group of opposition members who want to show their power to say: ‘Hey, look we can rob the statues in daylight, you can imagine what else we can do,’’ she said.

Meanwhile, 36-year-old Saeedeh, who works as a secretary, said she thinks it’s possible a fanatic Islamist group that believes that statues resembling human beings, forbidden in their understanding of Islam, might be behind the disappearance of the bronze busts.

New clues in the investigation might also emerge because one of the thefts was caught on a surveillance camera, Iranian media reports say .

Several unveiings of new bronze statues were planned in Tehran but they have now been put on hold due to the recent wave of thefts, according to Iranian officials.

‘After the serial theft of these bronze statues in Tehran, work on erecting new ones will be halted,’ Agence France Presse quoted Mousavi as telling the semiofficial Iranian news agency Fars.

There are reportedly more than 500 bronze statues in greater Tehran and Mousavi acknowledged it will be hard to protect all of them from lurking thieves.

‘Guarding them all the time by police’ is a difficult task, he said.

-- Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran and Alexandra Sandels in Beirut