Ivory trade: One Month in Prison for Three Offenders (Senegal)

Detained on February 11, in possession of 237 carved ivory items, which account for five and a half kilos of ivory, More Cisse, El Hadji Beye, and Massamba Mbaye will spend a few more days in prison. The judge sentenced them to one month in and severally to pay a fine of six hundred thousand francs CFA—a verdict in the eyes of members of the Senegal project under the Wildlife Act (SALF), which is not proof of a “determination to deter this highly lucrative wildlife trade” in Africa.

Three ivory merchants, More Cisse, El Hadji Beye and Massamba Mbaye, arrested on February 11 in Dakar are now built on their legal fate. They have indeed been tried and sentenced, on  February 26, “a month (prison) farm” and to pay “a fine of 600,000 CFA francs payable jointly to detention crimes, circulation, and marketing trophies of protected species.” These convicts had been “caught with 271 carved ivory objects representing 5 and a half kilos of ivory” while entering tortious objects was “to 4.5 million CFA francs,” the statement said 

Senegal Project under the Wildlife Law (SALF) dated February 11. The SALF, announcing the verdict through a statement, has made an appraisal of the verdict of these offenders. Taking care to indicate that “the same value of seized ivory was about eight million,” the SALF notes: “This conviction, considered low by the international community given the seriousness of the facts, does not show a determination to deter this highly lucrative wildlife trade across the continent and for which the last African elephants pay a very heavy price.”
Calling for “an effective fight against illegal wildlife trade,” the project, Senegal application of wildlife law, believed that the penalty imposed on the three ivory traffickers was to be exemplary. Also, it believed that “the judicial authorities in charge of sanctioning must use their imperium and pose the weight of justice on traffickers.” This attitude from them contributes to collaboration “with the work of a good justice and enforcement of wildlife laws.”