LONDON – A man was arrested on Dec 23 in connection with a removal of a street sign featuring work by the artist Banksy, the Metropolitan Police of London said.
The artwork, a red stop sign with three military drones, had been widely interpreted as a criticism of Israel’s bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Two men, one carrying bolt cutters, took down the sign in Peckham, a district in south-east London, shortly after Banksy unveiled it in a social media post on Dec 22.
Bystanders recorded video of the men before one took off running with the sign. The motive for the act was not immediately clear.
The police said a man in his 20s was arrested and taken into custody on Dec 23, on suspicion of theft and criminal damage in connection with the incident.
“Our local authority partners were informed at the time and have since replaced the road sign to avoid endangering road users,” a representative for the police said on Dec 23.
While the Banksy artwork in Peckham did not include any explicit reference to the war in Gaza, his stencils, wall paintings and graffiti often have social and political undertones.
In 2015, Banksy visited Gaza, where he created murals on rubble to highlight the destruction left from a previous conflict between Israel and Hamas.
He also opened the Walled Off Hotel, a nine-room guesthouse in the West Bank city of Bethlehem whose windows overlook the barrier that separates the territory from Israel. The hotel announced in October, after Hamas’ attack on Israel, that it would close “for the time being”.
The London episode was hardly the first time that street art by Banksy was removed. A mural painted on the emergency exit door of the Bataclan theatre in Paris was stolen in 2019.
Ninety people were killed in a 2015 terror attack on the venue.
Art by Banksy, who has gained worldwide fame while remaining anonymous, has been auctioned for thousands if not millions of dollars over the years, although he has discouraged people from buying street art that was not meant for sale.
“It’s a shame it’s been taken away because it belongs to all of us,” Ms Jasmine Ali, a city councillor in Southwark, the borough of London that includes Peckham, said on Dec 22, on social media.
“We’d like it back so that everyone in the community can enjoy it,” she added. NYTIMES
