On Monday October 9th, 2023, Kenya Wildlife Service, with Kenya Airport Authority security personnel, operating at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport terminal 1C, arrested an Indonesian national who was transiting for a flight to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Handrianus Theodore Putra, a 30 year old United Nations security officer, had arrived on an October 8th flight KQ 571 that had originated from Bangui, Central Africa Republic and transited Douala, Cameroon. He was found with two carry on size pieces of luggage containing 19.6kg and 18.8kg of ivory consisting of 18 pieces of worked ivory, 4 ivory rings, and 23 pieces of raw ivory. This discovery came during mandatory routine passenger screening.
He was arraigned in JKIA law court later in the day and pled guilty on the advice of his counsel, high profile lawyer, Danston Omari. The accused returned to JKIA court on October 17th for sentencing. After two hours of arguments on mitigation from Mr. Omari and four other lawyers, Senior Resident Magistrate Renee Kitagwa adjourned the matter for ruling and sentencing on Monday August 23rd.
The last reported ivory seizure at JKIA beyond small amounts of worked ivory (bangles, jewellery) was in July 2017 when a Chinese national, Cao Juano, was arrested with 120.9 kg of ivory as she was transiting for Hanoi from Zimbabwe. She was sentenced to a 6 million shilling fine or in default, one year in jail. She had been on remand for seven months at time of sentencing.
The typical sentence coming from the JKIA law court over the past 6 years has been a fine of KES 1 million (USD $10,000) or in default one year in jail.
The value of this shipment as reported to the media is 10 million shillings or USD $ 66,920.00. KWS, if they are the agency that provided the value amount, have typically valued ivory at KES 100,000 per kilogram or in this circumstance, 3.84 million shillings.
Details on court proceedings are at https://www.seej-africa.org/2023/10/15/e113-23-jomo-kenyatta-ia-r-vs-handrianus-theodore-putra-38-4-kg-ivory/
Further media reports as follows:
