JAKARTA: The pathetic sound of animals squeaking led to the arrest of a German national who attempted to smuggle rare baby Bornean earless monitor lizards from Kalimantan out of Indonesia last week, police have said.
Security officers at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport became suspicious when they heard animals screeching as the man, Holger Pelz, was going through an X-ray detector. An officer quickly located the source of the little animals’ distress call: Pelz’s crotch.
Brig. Gen. Yazid Fanani, the National Police’s director of special crimes, said that eight baby lizards were found stuffed into a small fabric bag bulging under Pelz’s trousers.
“It’s a good thing that the little animals sounded the alarm as he [Pelz] was passing through the detector,” Yazid said as quoted by kompas.com.
Security officers at the airport’s Terminal 3 counted eight baby monitors that Pelz had neatly arranged in the small bag.
Earless monitor lizards are endemic to Kalimantan and are legally protected.
Pelz, who arrived in Indonesia on Oct. 4, claimed he was not an animal collector and was attempting to smuggle the lizards on someone else’s orders.
“He bought the lizards for Rp 50,000 [US$3.69] each in Pontianak [West Kalimantan],” Yazid said.
The German has been held at the National Police’s detention house and will be charged under a 1990 law on conservation.
