DETECTED … The 18 rhino horns were picked up by the scanners at the Hosea Kutako International Airport, but the carrier was allowed to go through.
POLICE inspector general Sebastian Ndeitunga yesterday said he will take stiff measures on officers who were on duty at Hosea Kutako International Airport when the Chinese national smuggled 18 rhino horns out of Namibia.
Ye Zhiwei (28) was arrested on Wednesday last week at the OR Tambo International Airport, South Africa, when scanners detected the rhino horns in his luggage. He was catching a connecting flight to Hong Kong.
On the same day, Ye went through Hosea Kutako where, according to the Namibia Airports Company chief executive officer Tamer El-Kallawi, the scanners detected the horns but he was not arrested.
Ndeitunga also told The Namibian yesterday that Ye's contraband was detected by the scanners but officers on duty chose to ignore the rhino horns in his luggage.
“Otherwise, there was gross negligence on the part of those police officers who were on duty at the particular time. I will take very, very stiff measures, but I will first wait for the team's report,” he stated.
Figures released by the environment ministry last week show that seven rhino carcasses, poached for their horns, were discovered this month in the Etosha National Park. This brought the number of rhino killed to 47 this year. Environment ministry spokesperson Romeo Muyunda said 69 elephants have also been poached this year, mainly in the Zambezi and Kavango regions. Muyunda told The Namibian yesterday that the ministry is still to determine whether the 18 horns found with the Chinese national are from Namibian rhinos.
“We need to link them to some of these carcasses which were discovered. If they are Namibian, then obviously they have been poached,” he said.
The NAC also said that they were also investigating how Ye was allowed to proceed even after the horns had been detected by the scanners. The airports company spokesperson, Dan Kamati, last week said preliminary investigations confirmed that the scanners at Hosea Kutako detected the rhino horns.
