Court Registrars jailed for stealing elephant tusks

Two Registrars working at the High Court in Yokadouma, East Cameroon, are serving a three-year jail term each for stealing ivory tusks kept under seal in the court.

The registrars, Placide Ekel, and Rodrigue Metindi were caught on October 10, 2014, while transporting the tusks in a vehicle heading for Yaounde, by gendarmes at a control post. After a trial that lasted 14 months, the High Court declared the suspects guilty on December 4, 2015, and ordered that they are jailed in what can be considered an unprecedented move by the judiciary in Cameroon.

The convicts had earlier filed an appeal against the qualification of the offense as theft of seized products by the examining magistrate of the Yokadouma High Court. They pleaded that the offense be considered as ivory trafficking which would have entailed a lesser sanction for the offense as stipulated in Cameroon’s 1994 Forestry and Wildlife Law.

However, the court of appeal seating in Bertoua, confirmed the ruling of the Yokadouma High Court, thereby resulting in the application of the Cameroon’s Penal Code.

The Yokadouma Court hears many cases of poaching and ivory trafficking rampant in the East Region of Cameroon. The law requires that elephant tusks seized from poachers are tendered as an exhibit to adduce evidence in court during the trial.

They are kept in custody at the court registry until proceedings are closed, then can they be handed back to the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife.

“This landmark court ruling shows the determination of the Cameroon judiciary to fight ivory trafficking and corruption even in the courts,” says Hanson Njiforti, WWF Cameroon Country Director.

In a bid to reduce the risk of ivory being stolen in custody, WWF and TRAFFIC, the Wildlife Monitoring Network, supported Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife to retrieve some 354 tusks and 205 pieces of ivory from law enforcement services in the East, South, Littoral and Southwest Regions of the country in 2015. This effort falls in line with the National Ivory Action Plan prescribed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in 2014.