US Customs crack down on 'souvenir hunters'

American customs officials said yesterday that they had uncovered evidence of looting and "souvenir hunting" by US citizens in Iraq, including an attempt by a television news engineer to bring home paintings and monetary bonds in contravention of international law.

The officials said they had caught several travellers returning to the United States with paintings and even weapons in their luggage.

Benjamin Johnson, the news engineer, is the subject of a criminal complaint filed in court last week. He faces an initial hearing on Tuesday.

According to the complaint, Mr Johnson, who was "embedded" with US troops as part of a Fox News cable channel team, turned up at Dulles International airport outside Washington with a large cardboard box containing 12 paintings of Saddam Hussein and his son Uday, as well as 40 Iraqi monetary bonds.

Fox News, which has raised eyebrows during the war for its gung-ho support of the Bush administration, responded by firing Mr Johnson, who had worked for the station as a satellite truck specialist. "This is an unfortunate incident and his supervisor took the appropriate action for this transgression," a statement from the station said.

Mr Johnson, the complaint says, initially told customs officials he was given the paintings by Iraqi citizens and intended to keep them "for decoration". The complaint alleges that he stole them from one of Uday's palaces.

It is not uncommon for journalists, soldiers and other expatriates to help themselves to souvenirs of historical events. After the 1991 Gulf War, for example, American forces were seen dragging off armoured vehicles that had been bombed on the road out of Kuwait to Basra in raids that left several Iraqi soldiers dead.

In the past few days in Baghdad, a number of unconfirmed reports have suggested that US troops have attempted to steal money and other valuables under cover of the security vacuum left by the sudden collapse of Saddam's regime.

The US government seems keen to crack down on any such lapses, in keeping with its policy that everything in Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people, not the invading armies.

The administration has already had to fend off accusations that it stood by as some of Iraq's irreplaceable treasures – the contents of the national archeological museum and an important Baghdad library – were stolen, smashed and set on fire.

One intriguing but unconfirmed report in yesterday's Murdoch-owned New York Post suggested that four members of the 64th Division of the US Army had been arrested after stealing $900,000 (£570,000) in US bank notes recovered from a safe house in Baghdad.

The money, part of a booty amounting to more than $600m (£400m), was found last week in several cottages on the west bank of the Tigris river. Yesterday, American soldiers were reported to have found a further $112m(£70m) in an abandoned dog kennel.