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		</div><p>A 500-year-old Orthodox icon that was looted from a church in the breakaway north of ethnically divided Cyprus has been returned to the island.</p>
<p>The icon of the Enthroned Christ, which Cyprus’s Antiquities Department dates to around the end of the 15th century to the early 16th century, was presented at a ceremony on Tuesday to the head of the island’s Orthodox Church, Archbishop Chrysostomos.</p>
<p>The icon belongs to the 12th-century Christ Antiphonitis Church, which is near the northern coastal town of Kyrenia.</p>
<p>It was one of countless icons, frescoes, mosaics and religious artefacts stolen from churches that were abandoned when a 1974 Turkish invasion split the island between primarily Orthodox Greek Cypriots in the south and Muslim Turkish Cypriots in the north.</p>
<p>Turkey’s invasion had followed a coup mounted by supporters of union with Greece.</p>
<p>“Efforts to repatriate stolen artefacts are continuing,” said transport minister Yiannis Karousos, who presented the icon to the church.</p>
<p>The Cyprus Church traced the icon to an auction in Switzerland, and Swiss police seized it in 2014.</p>
<p>Following a long legal process, Swiss authorities handed the icon over last week and it was flown to Cyprus.</p>
<p>The Cyprus Church has for decades been trying to track down numerous religious artefacts stolen from hundreds of abandoned churches and monasteries in the north and sold abroad.</p>
<p>The church said the returned icon would be held by the archbishopric “until it returns to its rightful place” in the Antiphonitis Church.</p>
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