Greece has “just cause” in pursuing the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum, said Amal Alamuddin, addressing a press conference at the Acropolis Museum with the other members of the British legal team who came to Athens in order to provide legal advice to the Greek government on how to secure the return of the marbles. Alamuddin spoke of an “injustice that has persisted for too long”. “A horseman has his head in Athens and his body in London. The Greek god Poseidon has his torso separated between Greece and the UK”, she said, “nobody can celebrate the Marbles united in the place that they come from”. The Greek side clarified that Greece was not yet preparing for legal action to regain the Marbles. Greek authorities would first “exhaust the procedure with UNESCO”, which earlier this month expressed the intention to mediate in the dispute between Greece and the U.K., said Culture Minister Costas Tassoulas.
Geoffrey Robertson, a veteran lawyer leading the British delegation to Athens said that if mediation did not work, “there are legal opportunities and we should be aware that there are international courts”