War graves investigators have been called in to probe what is being described as one of the world’s worst cases of animal cruelty. One hundred sled dogs were killed after last year’s Winter Olympics in Canada because they no longer were wanted.
The specialists, who have investigated war crimes in Iraq, Bosnia, and Rwanda, will exhume the dog’s bodies from a mass grave in Whistler, British Columbia, reports the
Daily Mail.
Dogs were knifed to death, shot, and even stomped on, investigators believe.
The outrage occurred in April last year when Whistler company Howling Dog Tours found it had too many sled dogs as business dropped off following the invasion of tourists for the Vancouver Games.
It came to light when an employee claimed compensation for post-traumatic stress syndrome. The man said he was told to kill the dogs as a local vet had refused to destroy the health animals.
At the end of the slaughter, he claimed to be “in a haze” and covered in blood.
“The dogs were shot or had their throats slit, while those that proved hard to kill had to be 'wrestled to the ground and stood on' before they could be shot in the head,” the Mail reports.
Marcie Moriarty from the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said: “This is one of the largest and most complex investigations the BC SPCA has ever undertaken.
“Because of the length of time that has passed since the incident occurred, it is necessary to employ painstaking, state-of-the-art forensic techniques to gather the evidence needed to pursue animal cruelty charges in the case.”
Whistler was the base for skiing during the Games. Tourists paid $315 for a two-hour, six-dog sled ride round town.
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