The tourist faces a five-year prison sentence and a $ 7,000 fine for trafficking protected species.
A Russian tourist was arrested at the Denpasar airport on the Indonesian island of Bali while trying to leave the country with an orangutan drugged in his suitcase, the police said on Saturday.
This 27-year-old tourist, Andrei Zhestkov, was arrested at the security check before boarding a plane bound for Russia on Friday night. Officers found a two-year-old male orangutan in his suitcase, deeply asleep in a rattan basket, as well as two live geckos and five lizards.
The tourist risks five years in prison and $ 7,000 fine. "We think that the orangutan has been given allergy pills that made him sleep, and we found these pills inside the bag," an agency official told AFP. Bali Conservation, I Ketut Catur Marbawa. The Russian "seemed to have prepared himself, as if he was carrying a baby," because he was also carrying baby milk and blankets, the official added. The tourist faces a five-year prison sentence and a $ 7,000 fine for trafficking protected species. He told the authorities that the orangutan, which he thought he could make a pet in Russia, had been given to him by a friend, also of Russian nationality, who bought it for $ 3,000 on a street market. in the island of Java.
100,000 individuals in the world. Orangutans are an endangered species, including poachers, smugglers and villagers, many of whom consider them harmful. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, only 100,000 people remain in the world.