Book collector awaits thefts ruling
A wealthy businessman who cut pages from rare and priceless books at two historic libraries to boost his own collection must wait to learn if he will be jailed for his crimes.
Iranian Farhad Hakimzadeh defaced works at the British and Bodleian libraries to improve his copies of the same books. He replaced pages that were missing or damaged with leaves cut from library copies, many of which were publicly owned.
The 60-year-old was due to be sentenced at Wood Green Crown Court after pleading guilty to 14 counts of theft in May. But sentencing on Hakimzadeh, who is a director of the Iranian Heritage Foundation and a published author, was put off until January 16.
Head of collections at the British Library Dr Kristian Jensen believes he smuggled in a scalpel and positioned himself out of the view of CCTV cameras while stealing the pages.
Dr Jensen said: "He has a profound knowledge of the field. So in a sense from my point of view that makes it worse because he actually knew the importance of what he was damaging.
"Obviously I'm angry because this is somebody extremely rich who has damaged something which belongs to everybody, completely selfishly destroyed something for his own personal benefit which this nation has invested in over generations, so this is something that people have paid for for a very long time. Some of the objects which we believe are damaged have been cared for by the nation for centuries."
The 10 British Library works which he admitted damaging were worth £71,000 alone.
He initially told police he had bought the suspect books, found in the large library in his Knightsbridge home, second hand.
British Library staff said around 150 books were defaced in total, and many of the stolen pages will never be recovered.
The works dated from as early as the 16th century and all concerned European interaction with the Middle East. A map worth £30,000 was cut out of one of the books
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jxEvv4XT6Jo9hyqs5EYbwdSP08Sw
A wealthy businessman who cut pages from rare and priceless books at two historic libraries to boost his own collection must wait to learn if he will be jailed for his crimes.
Iranian Farhad Hakimzadeh defaced works at the British and Bodleian libraries to improve his copies of the same books. He replaced pages that were missing or damaged with leaves cut from library copies, many of which were publicly owned.
The 60-year-old was due to be sentenced at Wood Green Crown Court after pleading guilty to 14 counts of theft in May. But sentencing on Hakimzadeh, who is a director of the Iranian Heritage Foundation and a published author, was put off until January 16.
Head of collections at the British Library Dr Kristian Jensen believes he smuggled in a scalpel and positioned himself out of the view of CCTV cameras while stealing the pages.
Dr Jensen said: "He has a profound knowledge of the field. So in a sense from my point of view that makes it worse because he actually knew the importance of what he was damaging.
"Obviously I'm angry because this is somebody extremely rich who has damaged something which belongs to everybody, completely selfishly destroyed something for his own personal benefit which this nation has invested in over generations, so this is something that people have paid for for a very long time. Some of the objects which we believe are damaged have been cared for by the nation for centuries."
The 10 British Library works which he admitted damaging were worth £71,000 alone.
He initially told police he had bought the suspect books, found in the large library in his Knightsbridge home, second hand.
British Library staff said around 150 books were defaced in total, and many of the stolen pages will never be recovered.
The works dated from as early as the 16th century and all concerned European interaction with the Middle East. A map worth £30,000 was cut out of one of the books
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jxEvv4XT6Jo9hyqs5EYbwdSP08Sw