Icons stolen two years ago will return to Vitebsk

March 19, Minsk /BELTA/. Icons stolen two years ago in Vitebsk and taken to St. Petersburg will be returned to their rightful owner. This was reported to a BELTA correspondent by the press service of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. As explained by the Main Internal Affairs Directorate, on December 22, 2008, employees of the St. Petersburg criminal investigation department, together with operatives from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, during the "Antiques" operation, detained two previously convicted citizens of Belarus who intended to sell 4 icons of the 18th and 19th centuries in St. Petersburg. The investigation established that all the icons belonged to a pensioner born in 1938 from the city of Vitebsk. They were stolen from her home. Moreover, one of the detainees turned out to be the nephew of this Vitebsk resident. The ancient shrines were sent for examination to Rosokhrankultura. They recognized that the icons have historical and cultural value. Their total cost is about 135 thousand Russian rubles (at the exchange rate of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus, this amount is equivalent to almost 13.7 million Belarusian rubles). On March 18 of this year, Rosokhrankultura handed over the icons to the employees of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. The Russian police will return the antique property to its rightful owner. -0-