Looted from Syria, sold on Facebook: antiquities smuggling surges after fall of Assad

In one post on Facebook in December, a user offered a pile of ancient coins for sale. The ATHAR project provided the Guardian with dozens of screenshots and videos of Syrian antiquities, including mosaics and Palmyran busts, being sold on Facebook groups. A single Facebook search of “antiquities for sale Syria” in Arabic yielded more than a dozen Facebook groups dedicated to the trading of cultural artefacts, many of them public. Photograph: William Christou/The GuardianIn 2020, Facebook banned the sale of historical antiquities on its platform and said it would remove any related content. She added that she was tracking dozens of antiquities trading groups on Facebook that have more than 100,000 members, the largest of which has approximately 900,000 members.