WASHINGTON: Customs officials are employed to ensure travelers don’t pop from country to country with dangerous items such as firearms, bombs or even illegal animals. So officials in Graz, the capital of the Austrian province of Styria, weren’t exactly sure what to do when they inspected a bag and found a four-inch piece of human intestine residing there as if it were a pair of socks or a travel-size toothbrush.
They found the intestine Sept. 8 while conducting a routine check of checked baggage entering Austria at Graz Airport. The entrails, which had been tightly packed in plastic containers and were bathing in formaldehyde, were found in the baggage of a 35-year-old Moroccan woman, according to the Associated Press. The woman, who has not been publicly named, was returning from Morocco to Graz, where she had lived for the past eight years.
The situation grew even stranger when the officials asked the woman why she was jet-setting around the Eastern Hemisphere carrying jars of human organs in her luggage. The woman answered this question through her lawyer, Anton Karner, on Tuesday. As it turned out, the intestine belonged to her late husband, who recently died. His passing came soon after the couple shared a meal with the man’s family, who stood in stark opposition to their marriage.
At the time, the Associated Press noted, authorities in Morocco said the man died from intestinal obstruction. The BBC reported that his death occurred during an operation. The woman, though, wasn’t convinced. She thought the family might have poisoned her husband in an attempt to put an end to their union. But she had no idea how to investigate these suspicions. So she visited a doctor in Marrakesh, the city in eastern Morocco where the couple had been vacationing and visiting relatives. The doctor agreed with her suspicions, Karner told the New York Times, so he resected a small piece of the deceased man’s intestine and gave it to her along with the suggestion that she take it to Europe for testing.
Gerald Hoefler, the head of the pathology department at the Medical University of Graz, told the New York Times he believes that doctor then packed the intestine into the two thick plastic containers for safekeeping during her trip. “I would imagine that it was done by a pathologist,” Hoefler said. “It was absolutely secure, triple wrapped, according to European Union norms.”
