Cairo: Egyptian authorities have released a migrating stork days after it was held on suspicion of spying for foreign powers.
A local resident caught the bird in the southern Egyptian city of Qena last week and handed it over to police after finding a suspicious-looking device attached to its feathers.
“The device was examined and found out to be a satellite-linked gadget meant to track the migration path of the bird,” said Mohammad Talaat of the Wild Life Protection Department at the Ministry of the Environment.
“The agency, which attached the tracking device to the bird for scientific research purposes, was identified to be based in Hungary,” the official was quoted by state-run newspaper Al Akhbar as saying without naming the institution.
He added that his department released the stork to resume its migratory journey to the south after ensuring that the bird was in good health.
In Janauary, an injured carrier pigeon was briefly held by security authorities in Qaliubia, north of Cairo, after it was caught having a microfilm.
Egypt has recently stepped up security amid a wave of xenophobia after several Western powers condemned the military’s overthrow of Mohammad Mursi, the country’s first democratically elected president.
Egypt’s state and private media resent what they portray as the West’s unrealistic tilt towards the Muslim Brotherhood from which Mursi hails. The army deposed Mursi on July 3 after millions of people took to the streets demanding an end to his one-year-old rule.
