A Chinese national has been sentenced to a year in prison for attempting to smuggle thousands of live queen garden ants out of Kenya.<\/p>\n
The court in Nairobi on Wednesday also fined Zhang Kequn 1m Kenyan shillings (\u00a35,713; $7,737). Judge Irene Gichobi described Zhang as not \u201centirely honest\u201d and lacking in remorse.<\/p>\n
Last month, he was charged with illegally dealing in wildlife species after being arrested at Nairobi\u2019s main airport while attempting to travel to China with more than 2,000 ants in his luggage.<\/p>\n
Kenyan authorities have warned of a growing demand for the ants in Europe and Asia, where they are prized by collectors. They can be worth around $220 (\u00a3170) each.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is need for a stiff deterrent sentence,\u201d Judge Gichobi said, noting the \u201crising cases of dealing in large quantities of garden ants and the negative ecological side effects\u201d.<\/p>\n
After serving his year in prison, Zhang will be \u201creferred to his home country\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n
He has 14 days to appeal against the sentence, which his lawyer says he will do.<\/p>\n
He initially pleaded not guilty to the charges \u2013 including dealing in live wildlife \u2013 but later changed his plea to guilty.<\/p>\n
Following Zhang\u2019s arrest at Nairobi\u2019s international airport on 10 March, the court heard he had bought the ants from Kenyan national Charles Mwangi at 10,000 Kenyan shillings (\u00a358; $77) for every 100 of them.<\/p>\n
Mwangi was also charged and is currently out on bail.<\/p>\n
In May last year, a Kenyan court sentenced four men \u2013 two Belgians, a Vietnamese and a Kenyan \u2013 to one year in prison or a fine of $7,700 (\u00a35,800) for trying to smuggle thousands of live queen ants out of the country.<\/p>\n
The insects were reportedly destined for collectors in Europe and Asia.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Chinese national has been sentenced to a year in prison for attempting to smuggle thousands of live queen garden ants out of Kenya. The court in Nairobi on Wednesday also fined Zhang Kequn 1m Kenyan shillings (\u00a35,713; $7,737). Judge Irene Gichobi described Zhang as not \u201centirely honest\u201d and lacking in remorse. Last month, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}