SpyingSudan says Israel using electronically equipped vultures as spies
Sudanese security forces have captures what they describe as an electronically tagged vulture which was dispatched by the Israeli military on a surveillance mission over Sudan; the Sudanese claimed the vulture was equipped with a camera, a solar-powered satellite uplink, and a GPS device; the Sudanese also claimed that the surveillance gear was produced by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and that it was stamped with the university’s logo
Sudanese officials told the Egyptian Web site El Balad that Sudanese security forces have captures an electronically tagged vulture which was dispatched by the Israeli military on a surveillance mission over Sudan.
JTA reports that Sudanese officials said the vulture was captured in the town of Kereinek in the Darfur region in west Sudan. The Sudanese claimed the vulture was equipped with a camera, a solar-powered satellite uplink, and a GPS device. The Sudanese also claimed that the surveillance gear was produced by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and that it was stamped with the university’s logo.
A Sudanese official told Iranian TV that the vulture had a leg band saying, in Hebrew, “Israel’s Nature Service.”
Ohad Hazofe, a scientist working for Israel’s Nature Service, told Israeli news site Ynet that vultures are routinely tagged and fitted with GPS chips so their movement can be tracked.
“This is a young vulture that was tagged, along with 100 others, in October. He has two wing bands and a German-made GPS chip,” Hatzofe said. He added that the device had no photography capabilities.
“This is equipment that can give out distance and altitude readings only,” Hatzofe said. “That’s the only way we knew something had happened to the bird — all of a sudden it stopped flying and started traveling on the ground.”
Vultures can travel up to 375 miles a day.
Business Insider reports that a similar discovery in Saudi Arabia last year prompted local media to report that a bird, later identified as a Griffon, had been “arrested” under suspicion of spying as part of a suspected “Zionist plot.”
Saudi officials, after accepting Israel’s explanations that the bird was part of a migration study, dismissed the speculation and criticized journalists for jumping to conclusions.
The charges that Israel is using animals in its various military and intelligence campaigns are not uncommon in the Arab world. In February 2011, for example, after several European tourists vacationing in Sharm al-Shiek were attacked by sharks, an Egyptian government minister accused the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, of having a secret program to train sharks to attack European tourists in order to damage the Egyptian economy.
