NAIROBI: A Vietnamese citizen has been arrested in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi for smuggling rhino horns out of Mozambique, APA learnt Monday. According to media reports, the arrest however took place, not in Maputo, but in Nairobi as the Vietnamese, named as 47 year old Vuanh Tuan, awas on transit at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport from Maputo and bound for Hanoi.
The head of the criminal investigation police at the airport, when he arrived at Nairobi on board a scheduled Kenya Airways flight from Maputo.
He said the police decided to search his luggage and found seven pieces of rhino horn, rhino tails and lion teeth weighing a total of 12 kilograms.
According to the Kenyan media reports, the value of these illicit wildlife goods amounted to $123,000.
The horns loaded onto the Kenya Airways flight in Maputo almost certainly came from some of the rhinos slaughtered across the border, in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.
Mozambique where many of the poachers hail from, certainly tops the list of poaching activities on the African continent.
