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The Mystery Of The Missing Cigar Case
London Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson is coming under investigation by police following the alleged "theft" of a cigar case supposedly belonging to former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz in 2003.
Conservative candidate Johnson is claimed to have found the leather cigar case in the ruins of Aziz's Baghdad villa and taken it as a souvenir. He wrote about his exploits in The Telegraph shortly afterwards.
Johnson pondered the rights and wrongs of removing a valuable artefact from a nation where antiquities had gone missing. He concluded "To take the cigar case of the deposed number two of a deposed tyrant was hardly the same as swiping a 2300 BC bronze statue of a squatting Akkadian king."
Ironically, he is now being investigated by the very people who would have brought him to book had he really smuggled an ancient Babylonian statue out of the country. The Metropolitan Police's art and antiques unit contacted Johnson in a letter partly published by the Telegraph to say,
"Police attention has been drawn to reports suggesting that you have in your possession an item that may be Iraqi cultural property, namely a cigar case from the address of Tariq Aziz."
"Obviously it is at an early stage of our enquiries but I would offer to act as the 'constable' should you wish to transfer the item into our possession for further investigation."
Johnson has called the entire business a "monumental waste of time" - doubtless he has pointed to the line in his 2003 column where he offers to return the cigar case to Aziz if he wants it back (Aziz remains in US custody, whereabouts unknown).
Scotland Yard was apparently tipped off about the case a few days ago.
The Telegraph reports that Johnson's office believe that the investigation is politically motivated.
"There were over 18,000 crimes in London last month and yet the police write to me about this?" he said.
"What this shows is a concerted effort by my political opponents to waste police time by dragging up an article that I wrote five years ago and trying to make political mileage out of it. When knife crime is on the rise in our capital city, can it be right that police time is allowed to be wasted in this way?"
One could add that the cops' arts & antiquities unit might make better use of their time investigating the trade in real antiquities and stolen art: London has managed to become a world centre for this business on their watch.
Johnson might have a point about the political motivation behind the investigation. A poll put him five points ahead of Mayor Ken Livingstone (other polls, including one carried out for Ken's Labour Party, put Ken ahead). Johnson's camp believe that their man might be in with a chance of winning.
Livingstone himself has made several blunders lately, and has been tarnished by claims of corruption in awarding contracts.
Just in time then for the camp to put Johnson in the hot seat. Even if the accusation of being a war looter can't be made to stick, the allegations association Boris Johnson with the capitalist's favourite accessory - a fat cigar - and place him on the scene of the hated NeoCon invasion of Iraq, which Johnson voted to support in Parliament.
