Robert Hecht, an American art dealer charged in Italy with trafficking in illegally excavated antiquities, spoke out indignantly in his defense here on Friday, saying he had been unjustly accused.

Citing a Roman bronze figure of the god Pan that he said he had bought from Sotheby's auction house before it turned out to have been stolen from the National Roman Museum, Mr. Hecht said he had always acquired such objects in good faith. (That object is not at issue at the trial and has been removed from the market.)

Prosecutors, Mr. Hecht said, seemed intent on casting him as a villain. "Why don't they go after Sotheby's?" he asked. "It's because they want to smack me."

Mr. Hecht, 86, spoke during a recess in a long trial hearing. Inside the courtroom, a Rome prosecutor, Paolo Ferri, continued to build his case, detailing a web of connections among dealers who he said traded in freshly dug-up artifacts by routing them through Switzerland or prominent auction houses and into the collections of museums and private individuals.

Mr. Hecht is on trial with Marion True, the former antiquities curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, who is also accused of having traded in illegally exported antiquities.

On Friday, an expert witness for the state continued to match several artifacts in the Getty's collection to photographs of those objects - often in a fragmentary state - found in a Swiss warehouse rented by Giacomo Medici, a dealer who was convicted in 2004 on charges of trafficking in illegally excavated artifacts.

The expert, Maurizio Pellegrini, a document and photography analyst with the Italian Culture Ministry, testified that fractures in ceramic pottery could be smooth or rough. Smooth fractures suggest that the broken edge has worn down over time, he said, while jagged or rough fractures suggest a new break resulting from a clandestine dig.

On some photographs shown in court, Mr. Medici had scribbled "v. BO" - a shorthand, the prosecution contended, for "via Bob," which they said indicated that the works had been traded through Mr. Hecht.

"Why can't that mean 'visto Bob'?" ("Bob saw it"), asked Mr. Hecht's lawyer, Alessandro Vannucci, pointing out that his client was an expert in ancient art.

The Italian authorities have portrayed the trial of Ms. True and Mr. Hecht as a warning to dealers, museums and private collectors that illicit trafficking in antiquities must come to an end.

But on Friday, Mr. Vannucci said that his client was a scapegoat and that the wrong defendant was on trial. "The real culprit is Italy, which consented for many years to its territory being sacked," he said, pointing out that some of the objects cited in the prosecution had been sold decades ago.

"What this trial is showing is that Italy was indifferent for years," Mr. Vannucci said. "No one cared,"