Model living with lion, snake in Istanbul flat detained

ISTANBUL

An Iranian model has been detained by Turkish police in Istanbul after she was detected to be keeping a lion cub and a python snake at home.

The police teams, who had been investigating people selling animals illegally online, had begun following a social media account of the famous Iranian model Qazel Yadegari, who has been sharing photos with her baby lion and python snake for a while.

The police found that Yadegari had been keeping the wild animals, which is forbidden by law, in her house.

The teams carried out a raid on her house.

The baby Persian lion and the python, which were smuggled into the country, were tranquilized and put into cage by expert teams during the raid on the flat in the Sarıyer district.

The model was detained together with her assistants Mohammad Ali Rezvandoust and Kian Mohammadia.

Yadegari stated that she kept the animals as a hobby, the python had been with her for a long time and she brought the lion from abroad for $9,000.