Warsaw airport confiscates Israeli cellist’s strings: he could strangle someone

Renowned Israel cellist Amit Peled may have expected a more musically appreciative reception going through Warsaw’s Chopin airport.

But security guards there confiscated his spare strings and threatened to remove the set from his 300-year-old antique instrument on the grounds he could use them to strangle someone on board.

Peled was leaving the country after a performance with the Warsaw Philharmonic when guards stopped him, telling him the strings were “too dangerous” to take on board.

“For the first time in my life all strings were taken away from me at Warsaw airport’s security checkpoint claiming that it is too dangerous to take them on board… well, that is a first!” he said in an email to Classic FM.

“I have always carried an extra set of strings with me and was never asked to give them away! Well, at least they didn’t take the cello claiming that the endpin could be used to stab somebody,” he wrote.

Peled is a Grammy-nominated cellist, and a professor at John Hopkins Peabody Institute.

There was no immediate comment from Chopin airport.