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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 27 November 2008

Farhad Hakimzadeh

‘Trusted reader’ destroys books

Staff at British Library express outrage as ‘millionaire vandal’ pleads guilty

THE librarians in charge of Britain’s greatest literary treasures revealed this week how a trusted reader spent eight years mutilating and stealing from the nation’s rarest books.
Armed with a razor blade and an encyclopedic knowledge of the 16th-century literature of Eastern exploration, Farhad Hakimzadeh, a 60-year-old millionaire, stole up to 150 rare maps and pages from the British Library in King’s Cross between 1997 and 2005.
At the first public discussion of the thefts on Thursday, the head of the library’s British Collection, Dr Kristian Jensen, said he and his colleagues were “extremely angry”.
He said: “We are a library not a museum. Our readers need to handle our books physically. Within a strictly controlled environment, we therefore have to extend a bond of trust to our readers. Mr Hakimzadeh has fundamentally broken this trust.”
Library rules prevented Hakimzadeh from taking books out of the Euston Road building, but he cut out and stole individual leaves, many of which were of great value.
The British Library team which investigated the thefts had to minutely examine every page and illustration in 842 books consulted by the thief, Dr Jensen said.
Police searched Hakimzadeh’s Knightsbridge home after the thefts were discovered but found only 14 items.
Detective Sergeant Graham Simpson, who worked on the case, said there was no evidence that Hakimzadeh had sold the artefacts for gain. “As for his motivations, they are completely unknown,” he said.
Hakimzadeh, a scholar and author who fled Iran after the revolution, pleaded guilty to 10 counts of theft from the library and asked for other offences to be taken into account.
His sentencing, scheduled for Friday at Wood Green Crown Court, has been adjourned until January.

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