This week Islamic State militants beheaded one of Syria’s most prominent antiquities scholars in the ancient town of Palmyra, then strapped his body from one of the town’s Roman columns.

The killing of 81-year-old Khaled al-Asaad was the latest atrocity perpetrated by the group, which has captured a third of both Syria and Iraq. Since IS overran Palmyra in May, there have been fears the extremists, who have destroyed famed archaeological sites in Iraq, would demolish its 2,000-year-old Roman-era city at the town’s edge, one of the Middle East’s most spectacular archaeological sites.

According to Syrian state news agency SANA and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, al-Asaad was beheaded on Tuesday in a square outside the town’s museum. 

The Observatory, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria, said dozens of people gathered to witness the killing. Al-Asaad had been held by the IS for about a month, it added.

His body was then taken to Palmyra’s archaeological site and hung from one of the Roman columns, Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museums Department in Damascus, told SANA.

Al-Asaad was “one of the most important pioneers in Syrian archaeology in the 20th century,” Abdulkarim said. IS had tried to extract information from him about where some of the town’s treasures had been hidden to save them from the militants, the antiquities chief also said.

SANA said al-Asaad had been in charge of Palmyra’s archaeological site for four decades until 2003, when he retired. After retiring, al-Asaad worked as an expert with the Antiquities and Museums Department.

Asaad spent over 50 years working at the UNESCO World Heritage site, including alongside US, French, German, and Swiss archaeological missions.

He also wrote many books and scientific texts either individually or in cooperation with other Syrian or foreign archaeologists, SANA said. Among his titles are "The Palmyra Sculptures," and "Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra and the Orient."

Abdulkarim described Asaad as "one of the most important pioneers in Syrian archaeology in the 20th century." 

Two of the charges supposedly leveled against al-Asaad were, according to the New York Times, “representing Syria at ‘infidel conferences’” and being “‘director of idolatry’ at Palmyra,” the first stemming from his publication and outreach as an archaeologist and the second tied into preventing the terrorist-funded illicit trade in antiquities. 

Archaeologist Howard Williams writes at his blog, ArchaeoDeath, that, “as a fellow archaeologist who works on the late Roman and medieval periods, I am disgusted by this news as with all similar atrocities taking place in the region. IS have now killed an archaeologist not incidentally but because he was an archaeologist. I have no answer as to what the international archaeological and heritage community can do or say,” he writes. But it is clear that “his vicious slaying reflects on the brutality and greed of states, and the barbarity and greed when states collapse. It also sheds light on the terrible, destructive power of the illicit trade in antiquities.” 

The History Blog expands on al-Asaad’s role in preserving antiquities: “Asaad was involved in the transfer of the [Palmyra] museum’s portable antiquities — the artifacts IS likes to steal to fund their wars — to comparative safety in Damascus. A man who spends half a century dedicated to the study of his beautiful city’s rich history, excavating its ancient glories and sharing them with the world in museums and books; a man who, when the storm of violence approaches, works assiduously to hide those priceless artefacts from the monsters who would destroy them or disperse them into the hands of greedy, amoral collectors around the world; a man who then refuses to leave the city even though he knows he will almost certainly be a target of said monsters; a man who, at 82 years of age, sustains a month of God knows what kind of interrogation methods without breaking; a man who gives his life for love of history. That man is the hero.”

The reaction of the world has been rather muted, although there is a move to have museums fly their flags at half-mast out of respect. With IS just across the sea in Libya, there has been no such announcement here in Malta.

It reminds us very much of that famous saying by Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller, the German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor,

 “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me—

and there was no one left to speak out for me.”