ISIS ‘Department of Artifacts’ documents reveal trade of looted Syrian cultural treasures via well-established oil and weapon smuggling routes with Turkey. An RT Documentary crew investigating illicit oil smuggling by ISIS via Turkey have come across new documents shedding light on Islamic State’s lucrative trade in looted antiquities. Russia Today reports: There is no official accounting that would illustrate the true scale of looting being undertaken in Syria, a land once rich with cultural treasures. However, there is no doubt that since radical Islamists established a foothold in the region under raging civil war, pieces of the world’s global heritage have ended up in the hands of terrorists. Along with oil smuggling, a lucrative trade in antiquities has become ISIS’s source of income to support its devastating operations, many of which leveled unique historic sites such as Palmyra. Artifacts, some worth thousands of dollars apiece, have been turning up in antique markets from eastern Europe to the US. Following the exposure of the details of the ISIS oil business, RT has exclusively obtained additional evidence that sheds light on the jihadists’ black market of plundered treasures and its transit routes via Turkey. According to a document that the Kurdish People’s Protection [...]