Religious artifacts returned to Thailand after decades

Two stolen hand-carved artifacts, sandstone lintels dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries, were returned to the Thai government on Tuesday in a ceremony more than 50 years overdue

LOS ANGELES -- Two stolen hand-carved religious artifacts, sandstone lintels dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries, were returned to the Thai government on Tuesday in a ceremony more than 50 years overdue. The 1,500-pound (680-kilogram) antiquities had been stolen and exported from Thailand — a violation of Thai law — roughly a half-century ago, authorities said, and donated to the city of San Francisco, authorities said. They had been exhibited at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. San Francisco, which owns the museum, agreed to hand over the ancient sandstone slabs following a three-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a civil lawsuit. The lintels had been structural parts of two religious sanctuaries in northeastern Thailand. Records showed that the lintels had been obtained by a collector in galleries in London and Paris in the 1960s, according to the civil complaint. The collector, Avery Brundage, was apparently aware that at least one of the lintels had been illegally taken out of Thailand, the complaint states. Brundage, a former controversial president of the International Olympic Committee who donated the art to establish the museum, died in 1975.