Italy police warn reptiles being used by crooks as weapons after snakes found behind false wall

Anacondas, boa constrictors and a caiman were found behind a false wall in southern Italy, police said Thursday, amid warnings dangerous reptiles are being used by local crooks to intimidate their victims.

Police in Bari carrying out a raid in an apartment block found “exotic and dangerous animals” in a secret basement room which had been transformed into a clandestine reptile house.

The find included two green anacondas, each about five metres (16 feet) long and weighing around 60 kg and a spectacled caiman measuring over 1.5 meters long.

“The spectacled caiman … is a wild predator with extremely powerful jaws and potentially aggressive behavior” and posed “a real threat to public safety”, according to a police statement.

There was also an Asian water monitor, a lizard “of considerable size equipped with claws and a potentially dangerous bite”, it said.

Police also seized a yellow anaconda, a Bolivian anaconda, four Burmese pythons, approximately three meters long each, and four boa constrictors.

The reptiles were kept by “a man with multiple criminal convictions, who is currently untraceable,” the statement said.

The “possession of exotic and particularly dangerous animals in criminal contexts is a phenomenon of significant social concern”, it said.

“In several cases, these animals are used as tools of intimidation or as a display of criminal power in the area,” it added.