Six men pleaded not guilty in Norway today over the theft of Edvard Munch's masterpieces The Screamand Madonna18 months ago.
Five of the men are charged with planning or taking part in the theft at an Oslo museum; the sixth is accused of handling stolen goods.
The artworks, painted in 1893, have never been recovered. The men face up to 17 years in jail if found guilty at the trial likely to take up to six weeks.
Two men wearing black ski masks, one of them waving a gun, burst into the Munch Museum on August 22nd, 2004, tore the two priceless artworks from the walls in front of dozens of tourists and drove off.
The Scream, showing a waif-like figure clutching its head under a swirling blood-red sky, has become a symbol of angst after a century scarred by horrors from the atom bomb to the Holocaust. Madonnashows a mysterious bare-breasted woman with long black hair.
The Munch Museum has since undergone a €5 million security upgrade.
The media have speculated that the theft was to distract investigators from a bank robbery in the western port of Stavanger in April 2004 when $10 million was stolen and a police officer shot dead.
The loss of the paintings has been embarrassing for Norway. In 1994, another version of The Scream- Munch painted two famous versions of his masterpiece - was stolen for several months from Norway's National Gallery by thieves who broke a window and climbed in with a ladder.