Hunting for Blood Antiquities | Explorer

I want to witness a sale of these looted smuggled antiquities because that's the only way I can understand where the stuff's coming from, how it's getting out, what the kind of market is for this stuff. If I told them I was a journalist, they'd probably tell me maybe what I might want to hear or what they think I might want to hear, or they might show me fake stuff. So, the only way I can understand and really investigate what's happening is to get face to face, up close and personal with these dealers.

Now, of course, that's risky, particularly because these dealers are very nervous. They're doing illegal activities inside Turkey; they could go to jail. So this man on the roof said to me, "Look, these are the artifacts that are being offered." And I said to him that I was interested in going to meet these guys to pose as a buyer. He told me such an undertaking would be incredibly risky and that they might kill me.

Any Westerner turning up there would be a huge risk of being kidnapped and sold on as a sort of human antiquity. He actually said that I would be worth more than the antiquities on sale because they could sell me offers for human cargo. We're worth a lot simply by being a Westerner that they could get their hands on.

When he told me that they might kill me if I try and delve any deeper into what they're doing, I sent a bit of a tingle down my spine. I was thinking, "Wow, that's how dodgy it is. If you delve too deep, maybe you're gonna end up, you lose your head."