Cape Town -
With tightened customs and control at border crossings, Angolan dog smugglers are taking to the skies.
An anonymous tip-off on Monday led the police and the animal welfare task team to confiscate 13 pure-bred puppies minutes before they were to be loaded on to a flight to Angola at Cape Town International Airport.
The heavily sedated puppies were taken from crates and transported to a shelter.
Two Angolan men were arrested and detained at the airport’s police station, said police spokesman Captain FC Van Wyk.
“It must still be established if the dogs are linked to the syndicate operating from Angola,” he added.
Ismael Inacio, a friend and a self-confessed dog merchant, told the Cape Argus that the men had their paperwork in order.
“We are businessmen… Just like in Cape Town, people in Luanda [Angola’s capital] like to have pure breds… We buy dogs, get affidavits done by police and we take them to Angola to be sold as pets. They get looked after. No owner will spend R5 000 to R7 000 on a dog and not care for it.”
But Mariette Hopley, who heads the task team, is convinced this is not the case. She said the dogs were predominantly destined for fighting pits.
Scanning micro chips inserted in the dogs’ pelts, Hopley and SAPS’ Captain William Dreyer found that there were discrepancies between two of the chips and corresponding paperwork. This is a clear indication that the papers were falsified, said Dreyer.
Studying the passports of the two people who were arrested, Hopley pointed out details which she said indicated that these were also fraudulent. Investigations into the authenticity of the documents were still under way, but Dreyer agreed that they looked suspect “at face value”.
This was the team’s first bust at an airport. Citing successes that the task team had had in clamping down on cross border smuggling in trucks, Hopley said that smugglers were trying different means of moving dogs out the country.
Last week, the task team rescued 26 puppies from a truck destined for Angola. Two suspects were arrested in Diep River.
Cape Argus