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(04/24/07 4:00am)
OSLO, Norway – Three men who worked together to steal Edvard Munch’s masterpieces “The Scream” and “Madonna” were sentenced Monday to prison for their roles in the brazen daylight heist carried out by masked gunmen. Both paintings were recovered, but they were damaged.\nOne of the gunmen, the getaway driver and the mastermind of the 2004 theft at Oslo’s Munch Museum were convicted in late March. The second suspected gunman died in November before charges could be filed.\nTwo years after the theft, police recovered the paintings, which were scraped and punctured, their paint dislodged. The museum is considering using an eye-surgeon to remove glass shards embedded in the canvas after the frames were broken.\nThere are four versions of “The Scream,” probably Munch’s best-known work, depicting a waif-like figure apparently screaming or hearing a scream. The image has become an icon of modern human anxiety.\nPetter Tharaldsen, 35, was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison for driving the getaway car that spirited off the paintings and robbers. His term also included a sentence for an unrelated robbery.\nBjoern Hoen, 39, convicted of masterminding the theft, was sentenced to nine years for grand theft. Tharaldsen and Hoen were also convicted of being part of an organized crime group. Stian Skjold, 31, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years as one of the two gunmen who raided the Munch Museum.\nThe three defendants were also ordered to pay a total of $262 million in compensation to the city of Oslo, which owns the paintings.\n“There has to be a sharp reaction to such a serious crime,” the judge said during sentencing, describing the paintings as “two of the cornerstones of Munch’s production.” Police also suspect that the robbery was organized to draw police resources away from a 2004 bank robbery in which a police officer was killed.\nA lawyer for Skjold said he would appeal the sentence.\nMunch’s emotionally charged painting style became a major influence in the birth of the 20th-century expressionist movement. Munch died in 1944 at the age of 80.
(09/04/06 3:15am)
OSLO, Norway -- The Edvard Munch masterpieces "The Scream" and "Madonna" suffered minor damage after being stolen by masked gunmen in August 2004, but they can be repaired, museum officials said Friday.\nPolice remained tightlipped over how they recovered the treasures Thursday.\nMunch Museum director Ingebjoerg Ydstie said "The Scream" had been banged hard in one corner and "Madonna" had a roughly one-inch hole and some loose paint.\n"Our skilled conservators will be able to repair the damage," she said.\n"The Scream" is probably the best known of Munch's emotionally charged works and was a major influence on the Expressionist movement. In four versions of the painting, a waif-like figure is apparently screaming or hearing a scream. The image has become a modern icon of human anxiety.\n"The Scream" and "Madonna" were stolen in a brazen daylight raid on the Oslo city-owned Munch Museum on Aug. 22, 2004. Police announced their recovery but refused to say how they found the paintings.\nAlmost two weeks ago, the Norwegian news media began reporting that David Toska, considered the mastermind of one of Norway's most notorious bank robberies, was secretly negotiating with police for the return of the paintings.\nThe reports, citing anonymous sources, said he wanted milder terms in a 21-year prison sentence. Police refused to comment.\nDuring the trial of three suspects in the Munch theft, prosecutors suggested the paintings were stolen to draw police focus away from solving the commando-style bank robbery four months earlier that left a police officer dead in the western city of Stavanger.\nThirteen men were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms in the robbery of Norsk Kontantsevice, or NOKAS. Their appeal begins Monday.\nLeif A. Lier, now a private investigator, headed the police inquiry that led to the recovery of another version of "The Scream" that was stolen in 1994.\n"When the paintings were recovered four days before the court opens the NOKAS appeal, it is my opinion that the police got a tip," he was quoted as telling Norway's largest newspaper, Verdens Gang.\nIver Stensrud, head of the police effort to recover the paintings, said only that the investigation was built "stone by stone." The City of Oslo had offered a $317,000 reward for the return of the paintings, but Stensrud said no reward had been paid.\nThe makers of M&M's said they would honor a reward offered last week of two million dark chocolate M&M's for the safe return of "The Scream." The painting was featured in an advertisement for the candy, which was launched in August, as part of a campaign incorporating dark works of art.\nWhatever the motive in the Munch theft, famous artworks everywhere are targets.\nAccording to the FBI's 10 most-wanted artworks list, among those still missing are three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Manet and five Degas taken from Boston's Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in 1990 and a Cezanne stolen from England's Ashmolean Museum in 1999.\nEarlier this year, gunmen raided the Chacara do Ceu Museum during Carnival celebrations in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. They made off with a Picasso, a Monet, a Matisse and a Dali before melting into the crowd.\nIn Scotland in 2003, two men overpowered a tour guide and stole Leonardo Da Vinci's "Madonna of the Yarnwinder," worth an estimated $65 million. In 2002, two Van Gogh paintings worth $30 million -- "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" and "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen" -- were stolen from Amsterdam's Vincent Van Gogh Museum.\nIn the Norwegian case, three men, Petter Tharaldsen, 34, Bjoern Hoen, 37, and Petter Rosenvinge, 38, were convicted in May of minor roles in the art theft and sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to eight years.\nTharaldsen and Hoen were also ordered to pay $120 million in compensation to the City of Oslo. But government prosecutor Terje Nyboe said that demand would be dropped, since the paintings were recovered but that the two could be held accountable for restoration costs.\nThe works have been returned to the Munch Museum, although it was not clear when they would again be on display after restoration.\nAfter the shockingly easy theft, the once lightly guarded Munch Museum closed for nine months for a $6.4 million security upgrade. Now, key paintings are behind bulletproof glass, and visitors must pass through metal detectors and baggage scanners to enter.\n"The Scream" and "Madonna" were part of Munch's "Frieze of Life" series, in which sickness, death, anxiety and love are central themes. Munch died in 1944 at the age of 80.
(10/07/05 4:51am)
OSLO, Norway -- Late speculation ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize to be announced Friday swung heavily toward an award recognizing anti-nuclear efforts on the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.\nFavorites among a record 199 nominees included anti-nuclear campaigners such as Sen. Richard Lugar and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, and Japan's Nihon Hidankyo, the international confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers.\nFinnish peace mediator Martti Ahtisaari also ranked high, while the buzz surrounding Bono of Irish rock band U2 and Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof faded.\nThe Norwegian awards committee, which does not say who was nominated, announces its decision in Oslo at about 4 a.m. EST. Committee Secretary Geir Lundestad said the committee is more secretive, after two leaks before the announcement.\nIn both cases, the committee called the winner, then word got out to the media ahead of the official announcement. "We've sealed the hatches," Lundestad said.\nWith no hints to go on, Nobel watchers make educated and often incorrect guesses. The winner, such as last year's laureate Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist, can come as a complete surprise.\nStein Toennesson, director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, said his favorites are Lugar and Nunn for their program to rid the former Soviet Union of nuclear weapons, but that the Japanese anti-nuclear campaigners also have a good chance.\nA nuclear-related prize would recall the 1945 bombings of Japan, and come at a time of world concern about Iran's nuclear program.\nToennesson has begun to doubt his own No. 3 guess, Ahtisaari, because the Indonesian peace deal was only signed in August, six months after the strictly enforced Feb. 1 nomination deadline.\nThe early nomination deadline can lead to a year's delay in what seems like an obvious prize.\nThe peace prize is the fourth Nobel announced this week. The economics prize is to be announced Monday, while no date has been set for the literature award.\nEach prize includes a medal, diploma and a cash award of $1.3 million.
(08/26/04 5:01am)
OSLO, Norway -- The brazen daylight theft of Edvard Munch's renowned masterpiece "The Scream" left Norway's police scrambling for clues and stirred a debate across Europe over how to protect art if thieves are willing to use deadly force to take it.\nSome expressed fears that works of art are in increasing danger from violent raids -- unless, as Norway's deputy culture minister put it, "we lock them in a mountain bunker."\nArmed, masked robbers stormed into Oslo's Munch Museum in broad daylight Sunday, threatening an employee with a gun and terrifying patrons before they made off with a version of Munch's famous painting "The Scream" and another of his masterpieces, "Madonna."\nA day after the theft and despite many tips, police said they have no suspects, no trace of the paintings and no theory on a motive.\nThe getaway car and the picture frames were found by police in Oslo hours after the robbery. The car's interior had been sprayed with a fire extinguisher to cover up any clues, and Inspector Iver Stensrud of the Oslo police said it could take days to clean up enough to find forensic evidence.\nThe most likely motives, according to the Norwegian news media, are a ransom or to impress other criminals, since the paintings are so famous that they would be all but impossible to sell.\nWhatever the motive, Munch Museum Director Gunnar Soerensen appealed to the robbers to "please take care of the paintings, no matter what else you do with them."\nAnother of the four versions of "The Scream" was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo on the opening day of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway. Its thieves demanded a ransom but were caught in a sting and the work was recovered after about three months.\n"The Scream," an icon of modern alienation, depicts an anguished figure who appears to be screaming or shielding his ears against a scream. "Madonna" depicts the virgin as eroticized and mysterious, with a blood-red halo.\nThe lightly-guarded Munch Museum has silent alarms and security staff. However, in a country where even police do not routinely carry weapons, there would be little that unarmed museum guards could do to stop at least three robbers who seemed ready to use their weapons.\n"It is food for thought that the spiral of violence has now reached the art world," Deputy Culture Minister Yngve Slettholm told The Associated Press. "This is a first for Norway, and we can only be glad that no one was hurt."\nArmed robbery is rare in Norway.\nSlettholm cited a bank robbery in Stavanger in April in which heavily armed criminals shot and killed a police officer, a rare occurrence in a country where fewer than 10 officers have been killed on the job since 1945.\nSo, he said, the only way to totally protect great art would be to lock it away in a bunker out of public view.\nOfficials said there were no immediate plans to improve security at the Munch Museum.\n"We can't see that any mistakes were made. We also can't see that the evaluation we had ahead of this has been wrong," said Lise Mjoes, director of the Oslo Municipal art collections. "If we only thought about security, then we would have to place the pictures in a vault, but then they aren't accessible."\nThe dilemma is shared by many museums in Norway and abroad.\n"We cannot lock up our pieces of art because we want to show them to a large audience," said Sune Nordgren, director of the National Museum of Art in Oslo. He said having armed guards would only result in thieves outgunning them.\nIn 2001, thieves raided Sweden's national museum and cut down a self portrait by Rembrandt and two paintings by Renoir. Those paintings were hanging from steel wires, like the paintings in the Munch museum.\nJan Birkehorn, head of security at the National Museum in Sweden, said it's almost impossible to make paintings theft-proof without ruining the experience for visitors.\n"Should you put them inside security monitors with thick glass? I think the experience of looking at them would be lost," he said.\nHe also said he does not believe in having automatic metal bars that would close to keep thieves inside the museum because thieves "may take a hostage."\n"We are very aware of the changing world and the threats that face us, and therefore we have recently renewed all our security measures," said Soili Sinisalo, director of the Finnish National Gallery's main art museum, Ateneum. "Security must be airtight. That's the only way to make sure that nothing is stolen."\nSinisalo said the museum is retraining all its approximately 100 staffers in security and has placed cameras in each exhibit room.\nIn general, museums are very tightlipped about security, saying secrecy is one of their greatest defenses.\n"We can't talk about our security system because that would be like giving an instruction manual to someone who wanted to steal something," said Clemence Goldberger, spokesman for the Rodin Museum in Paris.\nSpain's main museums have armed guards and metal detectors. "We had a series of measures that are visible to the public but others that are secret," said spokesman Jose Maria Ambrona for Spain's Prado museum.\nFrance's Musee d'Orsay has extensive and largely secret security systems, in addition to guards and metal detectors.\nBut even that would not stop a violent robbery such as the one in Oslo.\n"Museums are never completely safe from such a theft. If an armed gang came into the museum with machine guns, there's not a lot that can be done," said museum spokeswoman Nicole Richy.\n"The frames on the pieces in our museum are much heavier than those in the museum in Oslo, so they'd at least need more people to carry them away," she added with a laugh.
(01/22/04 4:35am)
OSLO, Norway -- Salvage crews worked Wednesday to limit the environmental damage from a freighter that capsized in an inlet along the west coast of Norway, killing 18 people aboard.\nCrews sought to contain oil and fuel leaking from the 544-foot MS Rocknes, which overturned Monday with 30 people on board. Only 12 were rescued.\nOle Arvesen, spokesman for the Norwegian coastal service, said air was being pumped into the wreck to keep it afloat in their search for the bodies of the 15 who remain missing and presumed dead.\nThe ship capsized, possibly after running aground, in a narrow passage between the shore and nearby Bjoroey, about 200 miles west of the capital, Oslo.\nThe ship was carrying a load of stone bound for Germany along with heavy oil, diesel fuel and lubricating oil.\nSome oil reached the shoreline near homes outside the city of Bergen.\nContainment booms were placed around the wreck to prevent the oil from spreading. Hundreds of sea birds have already been killed or contaminated, said Stein Byrkjeland, of the local environmental protection agency.\nRescuers ended the search for the missing crew on Tuesday, nearly 24 hours after the ship capsized, saying there was no hope of finding more survivors after so long in icy waters.\nThe 30 crew members included 24 Filipinos, three Dutch, two Norwegians and one German.\nThe cause of the accident was unknown, but experts told the Norwegian news media that a large gash seen in the hull indicated the ship probably tore open its ballast tanks on rocks, causing it to become unstable. The cause will be determined at a maritime hearing in Bergen.
(12/11/03 5:34am)
OSLO, Norway -- Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi accepted her Nobel Peace Prize Wednesday, with a warning that civil liberties and human rights must not be allowed to fall prey to the war on terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.\nEbadi, the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to win the award, said even Western democracies have allowed their strong traditions of freedom and basic rights to be eroded.\n"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism," she said, speaking in Farsi.\nWithout naming the United States, she singled out the world's only superpower for holding prisoners from the war on terrorism in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "without the benefits of rights."\n"The concerns of human rights advocates increase when they observe that international human rights laws are breached not only by their recognized opponents," but by "Western democracies ... which count themselves among the initial codifiers of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," she said.\nEbadi said she accepted the prize, which includes a $1.4 million award, on behalf of all women, Iranians, Muslims and others who strive for human rights worldwide.\n"Undoubtedly, my selection will be an inspiration to the masses of women striving to realize their rights, not only in Iran but throughout the region," said Ebadi, who was cited for her work on behalf of democracy and the rights of women and children.\nIn Stockholm, Sweden, meanwhile, 10 Nobel laureates, including six Americans, received Nobel prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics from King Carl XVI Gustaf, the Swedish monarch. After the ceremony at Stockholm's concert hall, the laureates attended a banquet with the royal family and a host of dignitaries. \nVice President Al Gore.\nIn Iran, state television reported Ebadi had received the award, but carried no pictures of the ceremony, apparently because she didn't wear a headscarf. Hard-line vigilantes had issued statements vowing to punish her if she did not wear a scarf, according to newspaper reports.\nAsked about the award in Parliament, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi said, "it's a source of pride for Iran that an Iranian is given the Nobel Peace Prize."\nNo special ceremonies were scheduled in Tehran, but people who have satellite dishes -- and many do, though they remain illegal -- said they would watch the ceremony on foreign channels.\nIranian reformers have looked to Ebadi to rally opposition to hard-liners who oppose any change to the conservative Islamic government and have denounced her as a "Western mercenary." She recently was given police bodyguards after receiving death threats.\nIn Stockholm, J.M. Coetzee, became the second South African to receive the literature prize, after Nadine Gordimer, who won in 1991. The intensely private Coetzee attended the prize ceremony, but passed on the traditional news conference.\nAmerican Paul C. Lauterbur and Briton Sir Peter Mansfield received the award in medicine, and Alexei A. Abrikosov of the United States and Russia, Anthony J. Leggett of the United States and Britain, and Russian Vitaly L. Ginzburg received the physics prize. Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the chemistry prize, and American Robert F. Engle and Briton Clive W.J. Granger shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.\nThe Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his will and are always presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of his death in 1896.
(11/08/02 5:04am)
HALSA, Norway — After a playful, 90-minute swim Thursday, Keiko the killer whale arrived at his new winter home in a remote Norwegian bay that his trainers hope will attract more wildlife and fewer people. \nHis keepers kept the move secret until the last minute, hoping to avoid the publicity that has surrounded the six-ton orca since he swam to a Norwegian fjord after being released off the coast of Iceland earlier this year. \nKeiko swam alongside a blue boat stacked with boxes of frozen herring to Taknes Bay, where fishing grounds are rich and wild orcas are thought to be plentiful. \nOccasionally darting beneath the boat, Keiko waved his distinctly curved dorsal fin, responded to hand signals from a trainer and snapped up fish that were thrown to him. \nA handful of residents greeted him with a welcome sign and a painting of a killer whale, but the hordes of fans and media his trainers feared were absent. \n"It's so great to be here," said Colin Baird, Keiko's trainer. \nThe star of the "Free Willy" films was released in his native waters off the coast of Iceland in July, after more than two decades in captivity. His awkward forays in the wild and lack of social skills among other orcas have caused his handlers to wonder if the people-loving cetacean will ever bond with his own kind. \nThe head of the Humane Society of the United States, Paul G. Irwin, who was on the boat, said the ultimate goal remains returning Keiko to the wild, but its likely he'll seek the best of both worlds. \n"He is at liberty to do as he chooses," Irwin said. "The most predictable future for Keiko is in fact for him to interact with wild orcas while continuing to maintain a way-station relationship with his handlers." \nThe September arrival of Keiko, whose name means "lucky one" in Japanese, was one of the biggest things to ever happen in Halsa, a village of about 1,800 people on the fjord that adopted the slogan "Do like Keiko. Pick Halsa." \nHundreds of fans swam with him, petted him and climbed on his back until Norwegian authorities imposed a ban on approaching him. Even after that, Keiko came close to shore in response to an eight-year-old girl's harmonica serenade, mimicking a scene from one of his movies. \nBaird and Norwegian fisheries officials spent weeks searching for a winter home for the orca before settling on Taknes Bay, which is six miles from Skaalvik fjord and still in Halsa — a village about 250 miles northwest of the capital, Oslo. \nBaird said the new location is more remote and harder to reach and the water does not freeze in the winter, so they can lead Keiko out into the ocean to meet wild orcas that normally pass by in January. \nTo prepare for the move, the team brought in a large dock, place buoys to mark his area, find boats and repair an old house to use as a base. \nAuthorities in this Scandinavian nation of 4.5 million have endorsed the project, as long as Keiko, about 25 years old, is not penned in or captured, does not come in conflict with other maritime interests and is not commercially exploited. \nNorway is the only country that allows commercial whale hunts, but only for minke whales. Killer whales are a protected species.