Eighty cobras and vipers alive and summarily enclosed in plastic bottles were seized recently at Douala airport in Cameroon, just before being boarded a commercial flight to London, Cameroon customs announced on Monday. .
Two traffickers, a Cameroonian and a Nigerian, presented wooden crates upon boarding, showing staff “false authorizations” for transport, Jean-Claude Ekoube, in charge of Communication for Cameroonian Customs, told AFP.
On the night of December 3-4, “we seized 80 live snakes, cobras and vipers,” Ekoube said, adding that their final destination was London.
In photos posted on the customs Twitter account, the wooden crates can be seen open, the sides bearing red labels distinguishing the top from the bottom and crossed out with the word “venomous”.
Inside, we can see many plastic bottles of water or soda lying horizontally. They were perforated to allow reptiles to breathe, said Ekoube.
The traffickers wanted to take their dangerous cargo aboard an Air France commercial flight, so with a stopover in Paris before London, according to an airport security official who requested anonymity.
The two animal traffickers were arrested by customs officials and made available to the police, concluded Mr. Ekoube, assuring that this is the first seizure of this type of reptiles at Douala airport.