The raid, on a house on Street 173 near Olympic Market, was the result of a sting operation organized by the Forestry Department's Forest Crimes Monitoring Unit, said the unit's senior adviser, Patrick Lyng. Undercover agents posing as buyers met with wildlife dealers recently and arranged to go to the house and buy three tigers. Surveillance later revealed there were also two sun bears at the house. The arrests comes after a daylight bust on a busy street near Wat Phnom on Thursday that ultimately snared two suspected traffickers and four tigers. On Saturday, the task force faced the extra challenge of raiding a private house, Lyng said.
Current laws forbid authorities to enter private property without a warrant.
The raid had first been planned for Friday, but a delay in paperwork forced the task force to postpone the operation until the following morning. On Friday, while the Forest Crimes Monitoring Unit waited for Municipal Court and Forestry Department officials to sign the warrant, the buyers negotiated with the increasingly antsy dealers to wait one more day, Lyng said. Once the buyers made the transaction, at least 20 police waiting on the street outside were supposed to move in, arrest the sellers and confiscate the animals. But the raid, the first of its kind in Cambodia, did not go entirely as planned. Police firs on the scene did not immediately arrest the suspected dealer, and instead turned their attention to the caged animals around the compound.