Robert Mugabe: Raider of the Lost Ark

 A British Professor who claims to have discovered the legendary Ark of the Covenant in Zimbabwe of all places, now says the ark has been pilfered by Robert Mugabe’s government:

But after decades of exhaustive ­research, Parfitt became convinced that the ordinary looking wooden object in the storeroom of the Musuem of Human Sciences in Harare, Zimbabwe, really was the ­remains of the lost Ark.

Last year he published a book detailing his breakthrough and documentaries broadcast around the world heralded the find as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries since the Dead Sea scrolls.

The world’s media soon dubbed the Welsh professor “the British Indiana Jones”.

But now, almost a year later, Parfitt is worried. Since the publication of his book and the broadcast of the documentaries, the whereabouts of his intriguing discovery are once again unknown. Parfitt says he has been told by sources close to family members of the autocratic Zimbabwean president Robert ­Mugabe that the object is now in the possession of one of Mugabe’s relations, perhaps even Mugabe himself.

“I first got suspicious when I started to hear that several people who had tried to see the Ark, many of them ­respectable academics, had been turned away and the museum was becoming very cagey about it,” he says. “Then a contact of mine who has connections to Mugabe’s extended family told me that people close to Mugabe have taken it.

U.N. sanctions haven’t worked on Mugabe, maybe it’s time to send Indiana Jones after him.

(Hat tip: Chris Blattman)