Customs agents seize bizarre and odious items at airport
A cooked antelope and a couple of bedposts full of cocaine are among odder items seized from passengers at Washington Dulles International Airport, which serves the US capital, last year.
Customs and border protection agents at the airport also seized USD $48,000 from a Congolese woman who had hidden it in a tarot card instruction manual and not declared it. Other US airport agents found marijuana hidden in a tombstone, undeclared iguana meat, fried chicken with cocaine hidden inside and a hideous block of homemade black soap concealing a bird’s head with a beak visible in the centre.
Unidentified medicinal items taken from a passenger at Washington Dulles International Airport.
Dulles International Airport agents recently impounded mooncakes, meat, fruit and plants during an agriculture inspection blitz. That’s tame considering some of the contraband they find. They have found roast crocodile and clams painstakingly filed with cocaine.
On the more routine side, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police Department recently recovered hundreds of items in connection with a theft case at the airport. Items recovered include laptop computers, cell phones, cameras, jewellery and artwork.
Africa is a source of some weird items. US Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists seized and incinerated the suitcase contents of a Ghanaian passenger who arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport. It contained cooked cows’ feet and a herbal anti-inflammatory plant, as well as various other animal and vegetable material.
A woman from Ethiopia brought a cooked crocodile to Dulles International Airport and two passengers from Ghana were found to be concealing cooked antelope in their bags. A 54-year-old Nigerian man was arrested on allegations of “internally smuggling” heroin and a passenger from Ghana was charged with carrying about 5 kilograms of heroin, worth an estimated USD375,000 in a bag.
A tombstone filled with marijuana impounded at Washington Dulles International Airport.
Meat smugglers, mostly from Africa, are routinely arrested at airports in Europe as well an in the US. Many attempt to sneak in so-called “bushmeat” deriving from monkeys, gazelles, hippopotamuses, buffaloes, anteaters, gorillas, crocodiles, antelopes and various species of rodent. Some of the species are endangered.
One man tried to enter the US carrying 15 bags of curried mutton stew in his luggage, weighing almost 41 kilos. In that case, Christopher Hess, Customs and Border Protection director for the Port of Washington, confirmed that specialist agriculture agents “typically encounter similar food products arriving from Africa, but the sheer volume makes this an extraordinarily unique seizure”.
Customs agents at Liberty International Airport in New Jersey arrested a Ugandan man two years ago carrying four kilos of freshly slaughtered cane rat and antelope meat in his baggage. He was also carrying 40 passion fruits, 52 eggs, 39 green bananas and six avocados.
One banned African delicacy is “smokies” (sheep and goat heads cooked with a blowtorch while still fully skinned). A Nigerian couple were jailed for four months in London in 2001 for selling monkey steaks, chimpanzee hands and flesh from lions, antelopes, porcupines, anteaters and cane rats, along with large, live snails – all smuggled in from West Africa.
One of the accused, Mobolaji Osakuade, had offered to provide a human head for dinner-table consumption, the court heard. The would-be purchaser, who purported to be a gourmet cannibal, was in fact an undercover investigator.
Some of the odd items seized at Dulles International Airport can be viewed by clicking here.
Written by : Peter Needham
