BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Surprised airport workers in Argentina found hundreds of wriggling poisonous snakes and endangered reptiles inside the baggage of a Czech man who was about to board a flight to Spain.
Karel Abelovsky, 51, was made to open his baggage at Buenos Aires' international airport after police spotted reptiles in the X-ray scanner. They found 247 exotic and endangered species packed in plastic containers, bags and even socks, each labeled in Latin with their scientific names.
"The airport workers couldn't believe it when they saw the movement inside the suitcase. It was like an animated cartoon," a source in the office of Judge Marcelo Aguinsky said Tuesday. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the judge's investigation isn't complete.
Abelovsky was released on about $2,500 bail after surrendering his passport and is refusing to talk even though even though he faces up to 10 years in prison.
Authorities believe the man was a courier for a criminal organization that smuggles exotic species whose exports are banned, a judicial source said. Abelovsky only arrived in Argentina several days earlier and couldn't have had time to gather the animals alone.
Aguinsky believes the boa constrictors, poisonous pit vipers and coral snakes, lizards and spiders could have escaped the cloth suitcase in the unpressurized cabin of the Dec. 7 Iberia flight to Madrid, and perhaps attacked people there or at his final destination in Prague, where antidotes for South American snakes aren't common, the source added.