Ancient Cambodian statues back home from US art collections
Three figures looted during Cambodia's civil war returned from gallery and auction houses in US
Three 1,000-year-old statues depicting Hindu mythology are back home in Cambodia after being looted from a temple during the country's civil war and put in Western art collections.
The pieces were handed over on Tuesday at a ceremony attended by Deputy Prime Minister Sok An and US diplomat Jeff Daigle after being returned by the US branches of Sotheby's and Christie's, and the Norton Simon Museum in California.
Cambodian officials say the statues were looted in the 1970s from the Koh Ker temples complex in Siem Reap province, also home to the Angkor temples complex.
A 1993 Cambodian law prohibits the removal of cultural artifacts without government permission. Pieces taken after that date have stronger legal standing to compel their new owners abroad to return them.
But there is also general agreement in the art world that pieces were acquired illegitimately if they were exported without clear and valid documentation after 1970 - the year of a UN cultural agreement targeting trafficking in antiquities.
The three statues are representations of the mythological Hindu figures Duryodhana, Balarama and Bhima.
Their return marks a step forward in efforts to bring back together nine figures that once formed a tableau in a tower of the temple, showing a famous duel in Hindu mythology.