RIYADH, 1 August — It was a routine customs inspection. The official on duty at King Khaled International Airport didn’t imagine what the suitcase in front held until it was opened and his colleagues became wide-eyed, red-faced and visibly panicky.
What he saw was beyond his wildest imagination. The declared material was out of the wilds, enough to give one the creeps — crawling all over the place with passengers and officials scurrying for cover. It certainly wasn’t his idea of contraband.
Some 300 cobras, all live and lethally venomous, emerged from the baggage and began slithering hither and dither.
The man who tried to smuggle the snakes was traveling from Cairo to Riyadh. His nationality was not immeditaley known. Nor was his motive in smuggling cobras which were eventully killed with the help of skilled personnel from the Ministry of Agriculture.
According to an AFP report Mohammad Al-Dakheel, head of Customs at the KKIA could not give an exact number of the unwelcome reptiles. But passenegrs and other eyewitnesses said the number would exceed 300. It was the first incident of its type in the Kingdom.
No-one was bitten by the cobras. “An investigation has already begun to ascertain why this attempt to bring cobras into the country was made,” airport sources said.
