Smuggling Network Destroyed

In May, UWA, together with the Ugandan Police and conservationists dismantled chimpanzee smugglers in an operation conducted in Kampala. They arrested four suspects and recovered two chimpanzees which were smuggled into Uganda from Congo. Two men were arrested in Mengo-Kisenyi as they were bargaining with two people who were posing as buyers. The sellers demanded US$ 4,000 for a three-year-old chimpanzee. After interrogation, the suspects named a woman colleague in Kisenyi who was later arrested with her husband.
A week earlier, this couple had received US$ 500 from Debbie Cox, JGI, to supply two chimps, a leopard and parrots. She recovered a chimpanzee less than one year old and promised that she would pay for all the animals. Unfortunately, the ape had been starved and died a day after being rescued. UWA officers suspect that the smugglers had kept the chimpanzee in Kampala.
Another recovered chimpanzee had been kept by Charles Lwanga, a Uganda Peoples Defence soldier who had been keeping the animal at his residence for the last six months. When it was confiscated and handed over to JGI, it was about one year old and severely malnourished.
Not all the arrested smugglers were punished appropriately. One of the four Congolese arrested for trafficking in chimpanzees was released by Buganda Road magistrate's court on a trivial bail. The Ugandan press criticized this severely. The Congolese were allegedly working with foreign diplomats and licenced wildlife exporters to smuggle the chimpanzees to Europe where they are sold as laboratory animals. Some rich people in the Middle East also want apes as pets.
The chimp smuggling network had already been smashed five years ago but now seems to be in danger of resurrecting. The Congolese smuggler should have been kept in jail until his trial was over. If he had to be given bail, it should have matched at least the value of the chimpanzee.

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