Item of the Week: Man Kicks Dog, US Boots Man

A 70-year-old Egyptian man traveling on a tourist visa attempted to smuggle more than 100 pounds of undeclared food in his luggage as he entered the country at Dulles International Airport. That was bad, but the man, Hamed Ramadan Bayoumy Aly Marie, made matters much worse when he kicked the dog that had sniffed out his contraband, a 5-year-old beagle named Freddie.

According to the US Customs and Border Protection, where Freddie is employed as an agriculture-detector dog, Marie “violently kicked Freddie with sufficient force to lift the 25-pound beagle off the ground.”

CBP officers immediately swarmed over Marie, cuffed him, and turned him over to Homeland Security Investigations for prosecution. Justice was swift: at the Eastern District court of Virginia, Marie pleaded guilty to harming animals used in law enforcement. He was credited with time served, ordered to pay the veterinarian’s fee (Freddie had suffered contusions to his ribs), and was put on a return flight to Egypt.

Marie had packed himself quite a picnic: 55 pounds of beef meat, 44 pounds of rice, 15 pounds of eggplant, cucumbers, and bell peppers, two pounds of corn seeds, and a pound of herbs. (Question: Why? Did he not realize that we have food in America?)

“Being caught deliberately smuggling well over one hundred pounds of undeclared and prohibited agriculture products does not give one permission to violently assault a defenseless Customs and Border Protection beagle,” CBP’s Christine Waugh said in a news release. “We rely heavily on our K9 partners and Freddie was just doing his job.”

Give that dog a treat.

Photo credit: US Customs and Border Protection