Egypt`s police puts `spy duck` under arrest

Cairo: Quack-down! Egyptian police have arrested a duck after a device was found attached to its feathers and it was suspected of being a `spy`.

A fisherman in the Nile River of Egypt`s southern governorate Qena caught the accused bird, which was among a group of five ducks waddling in the freshwater. The fisherman became suspicious as a device was attached on the duck`s body, and he handed over the bird to the Coalition of Arab Tribes in Qena, who in turn filed a police report. The police put the duck under arrest late Friday, Ahram Online reported. A security official was quoted as saying that security and environmental experts examined the device in order to determine its intended purposes and whether or not the little bird has repeated national secrets to anyone. They later found that the device was neither an explosive nor a spying device. It was found to be a wildlife tracker used by French scientists to follow the movement of migrating birds, media reports said. With a raging political turmoil in Egypt after the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on July 3 by the army, authorities and citizens have become highly suspicious of anything foreign. In January, a carrier pigeon was captured in the Egyptian governorate Qalyubia and was sent to the Criminal Investigation Department after a message was found attached to one of its feet and a microfilm to the other. In 2010, sensationalist reports surfaced in the local media on "GPS-controlled sharks" allegedly sent by Israel to Sinai shores. PTI