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Spain wants US to hand over shipwreck booty - US news - Life - msnbc.com
TAMPA, Florida — TAMPA, Fla. -- A federal judge was considering Friday whether to force Florida deep-sea explorers to hand over to Spain the last of the treasure they recovered from a 200-year-old shipwreck.
Last month, Spanish military planes flew home with nearly 600,000 silver coins and other artifacts after prevailing in a five-year legal battle over ownership with Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration. Now, Spain wants the rest of it -- specifically some artifacts that Odyssey left behind in Gibraltar when it flew the coins to the United States in May 2007.
An employee of Spain's Culture Ministry displays some of the 594,000 coins and other artifacts found in the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a Spanish galleon sunk by British warships in the Atlantic while sailing back from South America in 1804. The treasure was found and recovered by Odyssey Marine Exploration in Tampa, Fla.