31 Jul 10

Vietnamese Court Sends Rhino Horn Smuggler to Jail

A Hanoi man has been given a three-year jail sentence for smuggling rhino horn into Vietnam from South Africa.

A three-year jail sentence has been handed down by the Ho Chi Minh City appeals court to a Vietnamese man who smuggled five rhino horns from South Africa to Vietnam in 2008.

Tran Van Lap of Hanoi transported the rhino horns without a license on January 3, 2008 into the Tan Son Nhat Airport, according to Thanh Nien Daily.

Lap obtained four of the horns after killing two rhinos in a 2007 trophy hunt – an increasingly common method for laundering rhino horns – and purchased the fifth horn separately. He claimed that the two pairs of horn from the hunted rhinos were licensed in Limpopo for export under CITES guidelines.

At his first trial in August 2009, Lap was sentenced to one year, one month and 20 days. The court initially said there was only enough evidence to show he had smuggled one rhino horn, not all five.

Fortunately, the lighter sentence was opposed by the the local prosecutor’s office (HCMC People’s Procuracy), and an appeal was lodged for a heavier punishment.

Traditional Chinese “medicines” containing illegal rhino horn are in high demand in Vietnam (and of course, China), although extensive scientific research has confirmed that rhino horn actually has no medicinal value.

Source: Thanh Nien Daily

Rhishja Cota-Larson

I am the founder of Saving Rhinos LLC, which publishes news and information about the global rhino crisis. Besides writing Rhino Horn is Not Medicine, I am the author of the book Murder, Myths & Medicine, the Editor of Project Pangolin, and a writer for the environmental news blog Planetsave. When I'm not blogging about the illegal wildlife trade, I like to rock out to live music.

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