ZCZC
BFF-13
INDONESIA-ANIMAL-CONSERVATION
Indonesia busts Russian smuggling drugged orangutan
DENPASAR, Indonesia, March 23, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A Russian tourist
attempting to smuggle a drugged orangutan out of Indonesia in his suitcase to
bring home and keep as a pet has been arrested in Bali, police said Saturday.
Andrei Zhestkov was detained in Denpasar airport late on Friday while
passing through a security screening before a planned flight back to Russia.
Suspicious officers stopped him and opened his luggage to find a two-year-
old male orangutan sleeping inside a rattan basket.
“We believe the orangutan was fed allergy pills which caused him to sleep.
We found the pills inside the suitcase,” Bali conservation agency official I
Ketut Catur Marbawa told AFP Saturday.
“(Zhestkov) seemed prepared, like he was transporting a baby,” he added.
The 27-year-old also packed baby formula and blankets for the orangutan,
Marbawa said.
Police also found two live geckos and five lizards inside the suitcase.
Zhestkov told authorities that the protected species was gifted by his
friend, another Russian tourist who bought the primate for $3,000 from a
street market in Java.
He claimed his friend, who has since left Indonesia, convinced him he
could bring home the orangutan as a pet.
The Russian could face up to five years in prison and $7,000 in fines for
smuggling, Marbawa said.
Orangutans are a critically endangered species, according to the
International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 100,000
remaining worldwide.
Plantation workers and villagers in Indonesia often consider the apes
pests and sometimes attack them, while poachers capture the animals to sell
as pets.
A string of fatal attacks on the apes have been blamed on farmers and
hunters.
Four Indonesian men were arrested last year over the killing of an
orangutan shot some 130 times with an air gun.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1044 hrs