British human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney leaves Greece on Thursday after a three-day visit as part of a high-profile London-based legal team. During her stay, she was able to advise a number of Greek officials about possible action in the international court to force the British Museum to hand over the marbles.
Ms. Clooney said that Britain should be embarrassed about how the 5th-century works are split between two countries and gave the example of a horseman whose head is in Athens and body in London. “That means that nobody can celebrate the marbles united, in the place that they came from,” she said.
“The Greek government has just cause and it’s time for the British Museum to recognize that and return them to Greece,” she said at a packed press conference in Athens. “The injustice has persisted for too long. The Greek government has the right to ask for the return of the marbles, 200 years after they were taken to the United Kingdom.”
Greece has been delighted in Ms. Clooney’s visit to the country to help raise the profile of the long-standing dispute that the country has with the British Museum. Asked if her husband would help in the case, Ms. Clooney said that it is up to her husband to decide which causes he chooses to support.
Doors opened everywhere with Ms. Clooney meeting with the top officials of Greece, including Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, however sources state that she didn’t go to the acropolis because she wasn’t wearing the right shoes. Both Culture Minister Constantinos Tassoulis and Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni were willing to find the right “flat” shoes however she politely declined.
She did, however, stay for four hours at the Acropolis Museum and was given a tour by Acropolis Museum Director Dimitris Pantermallis and Mr. Tassoulas. She was allowed to touch some of the works, something that ordinary museum visitors aren’t privy to.
She lunched at the restaurant with Mr. Tassoulas, Deputy Culture Minister Angela Gerekou and the prime minister’s wife, Georgia Samaras, where they enjoyed a meal of salmon and shrimp cocktails washed down with glasses of riesling.