Malaysian jailed for 95 snakes on a plane
A Malaysian was jailed for six months and fined 190,000 ringgit
($61,000) for trying to smuggle 95 snakes out of the country, a sentence
that campaigners said was too light.
Anson Wong is described as one of the world’s most wanted
smugglers of wildlife. Picture: Courtesy The Star |
Anson Wong, already convicted of trafficking in wildlife in the
United States in 2001, pleaded guilty last week and will start his
sentence on September 13.
Under Malaysian law, Wong could have faced seven years in jail and
fines of up to 100,000 ringgit ($32,000) for each snake up to a maximum
of a million ringgit or both.
Wong was detained when in transit from the Malaysian island state of
Penang to the Indonesian capital Jakarta on August 26 when staff at
Kuala Lumpur airport were alerted to a bag that had broken while on a
conveyor belt.
They found 95 boa constrictors, two rhinoceros vipers and a matamata
turtle inside the bag. The U.S. Department of Justice said Wong had
pleaded guilty to a trafficking in the United States in 2001 and was
sentenced to 71 months in jail.
TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring organisation, said the sentence
indicated unwillingness by Malaysian authorities to get tough with real
wildlife criminals and to show the world it was serious about wildlife
trafficking.
“This is a tragedy. It clearly tells wildlife traffickers that they
have little to fear from Malaysian law,” said TRAFFIC Southeast Asia
regional director, William Schaedla.
REUTERS |