​Melania Trump statue set on fire ​

Almost exactly a year after it was erected near her hometown in Slovenia, a wooden statue of US First Lady Melania Trump has been removed after it was set alight. 

While she and President Donald Trump celebrated Independence Day over the weekend, the statue – commissioned by Berlin-based American artist Brad Downey and sculpted by local folk artist Ales Zupevc – was lit on fire.

The life-size sculpture, carved by chainsaw from the trunk of a tree, hardly resembled Ms Trump before somebody took a match to it, though was painted with a pale blue wraparound coat resembling the one she wore when her husband was sworn in as President in 2017.

Now blackened and disfigured, Mr Downey said he had the statue removed as soon as police informed him it had been damaged.

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Statue of Melania Trump torched in her native Slovenia https://t.co/8cm3YoRZb8 pic.twitter.com/MDhGsR4sZ6

— New York Post (@nypost) July 8, 2020

“There’s a lot of buzz around the destruction of monuments, so it could come from left-leaning people,” the 39-year-old told The New York Times.

“Or it could be from right-leaning people, because they don’t like how it looks or think it’s disrespectful, aesthetically.”

Mr Downey said that judging by the state of the statue’s remains, whoever had set it alight had most likely put tyres around the head and then dumped gasoline on it.

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He said he didn’t want to press charges against those responsible, but wished to interview them.

“Why did you do this? Who are you? I’d love to speak to you,” he said.

Mr Downey told Reuters he wanted to know why the culprits did it.

Police spokeswoman Alenka Drenik told Reuters the investigation into what happened was incomplete, so police “cannot reveal details due to the interest of further procedures”.