Rare Ethiopian crown, hidden for 21 years in the Netherlands, returns home

ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia´s government on Thursday assumed custody of a priceless 18th-century crown that a former refugee had kept hidden in his apartment in the Netherlands for two decades. The handover took place at a ceremony in the capital, Addis Ababa, attended by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch minister for foreign trade and development cooperation. Sirak Asfaw, the one-time refugee who is now a Dutch citizen, fled Ethiopia during the late 1970s during the so-called “Red Terror” purges. He found the gilded crown — which features images of Christ and the Twelve Apostles — in 1998 in a suitcase left behind by a visitor. It had “disappeared” from the Holy Trinity Church in Cheleqot, a village in northern Ethiopia, the Dutch government said in a statement Thursday. Sirak assumed the crown had been stolen but worried it would “just disappear again” if he returned it to Ethiopia´s leaders, so he kept it in his apartment in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, he told AFP last year.