Home for rescued Lebanese baboon

Lola was flown to Heathrow and arrived at the sanctuary last week

A four-year-old baboon rescued from "appalling and abusive" conditions at a Lebanese pet shop is starting a new life in the Swansea Valley.

Lola has been flown to the UK by animal welfare groups to take up residency at the Cefn-yr-Erw Primate Sanctuary.

Rescuers claim she was beaten and forced to eat cigarettes to amuse onlookers before she was released.

She joined more than 50 other primates at the sanctuary near Abercrave earlier this month and is settling in well.

Lola's plight was discovered by animal welfare workers in Beirut, assisting an investigation into the smuggling of chimpanzees.

They said she was close to giving up on life as she was confined to a tiny cage where she was underfed and deprived of a reliable source of water.

She was only in a very small cage - about a third the size of a telephone box Graham Garen

Because she did not have the skills to survive in the wild the World Society for the Protection of Animals secured a home for her at the sanctuary and paid the £1,600 it cost to transport her.

Cefn-yr-Erw was formerly a traditional Welsh hill farm which now provides a home for many types of unwanted animals, including chimpanzees, baboons, spider monkeys, capuchins and marmosets.

Graham Garen who runs the sanctuary with his wife Jan said: "She (Lola) has got a few displacement problems because she was only in a very small cage - about a third the size of a telephone box - and she is spinning around to exercise.

"That's slowing down and she seems to be settling down."

He said she was now in accommodation 50 times the size she was used to and was in quarantine at the sanctuary with a male baboon called Tom who arrived two months ago.

"They seem to be getting along well at the moment," added Mr Garen.