Rhino Poaching: Arrests, Prosecutions & Sentencing

[Lisbeth]

[Richprins]

[Flutterby]

[Lisbeth]

Trio found guilty of poaching EC rhinos

By Adrienne Carlisle - 15 March 2019


Jabulani Ndlovu, Forget Ndlovu and Sikhumbuzo Ndlovu at the Grahamstown High Court on Tuesday.
Image: ADRIENNE CARLISLE

The three members of the notorious Ndlovu Gang have been found guilty of dozens of charges relating to the poaching of 13 rhinos in the Eastern Cape over some five years.

Jabulani Ndlovu, 40, Forget Ndlovu, 37, and Sikhumbuzo Ndlovu, 38 sat poker-faced as Judge Jeremy Pickering pronounced each of them guilty of over 50 charges related to the poaching of the 13 rhinos.

The men are not related.

Although Forget escaped conviction on charges relating to just one of the poaching incidents, it will probably make little difference to the stiff prison sentence the men may now face.

Pickering spent the morning recounting the damning physical and circumstantial evidence which linked each of the accused to most of the 13 poaching incidents.

At the lunch break the court orderly ushered the surprised men down into the court prison cell. They have been out on bail for the duration of their trial.

The courtroom, which was packed to capacity, clapped loudly as the three men descended the stairs.

Green Scorpions director Div de Villiers said he was thrilled with the outcome.

“It is great news. A lot of work went into this over many years. We will wait for sentence before we celebrate but we are very happy with the judgment.”

The court room was packed to capacity.

[Lisbeth]

Judgement day for Rhino poaching accused

By Adriene Carlisle - 15 March 2019


Posters outside the courthouse calling for and end the rhino poaching and harsh sentences for convicted poachers.
Image: ADRIENNE CARLISLE

It’s judgment day for the three men accused of poaching 13 Eastern Cape rhinos in what has proved to be one of the biggest rhino poaching cases in the province to date.

Following a mammoth trial, Judge Jeremy Pickering began giving judgment at 9.30am to a packed court. The accused Jabulani Ndlovu, 40, Forget Ndlovu, 37, and Sikhumbuzo Ndlovu, 38 looked tense and uncomfortable sitting in the dock.

Behind them was a hostile public gallery packed with dozens of environmentalists, game farm owners, and khaki-clad game rangers and members of private anti-poaching units.


JUDGEMENT DAY The packed courtroom where alleged rhino poachers Jabulani Ndlovu, 40, Forget Ndlovu, 37, and Sikhumbuzo Ndlovu, 38 will hear their fate.
Image: ADRIENNE CARLISLE

Outside the court protestors left dozens of posters objecting to the vicious rhino poaching which had decimated rhino populations across the Eastern Cape and the rest of the country. “Jail not bail; Justice for rhinos” and “10 years = 7000 plus rhinos killed”, read some of the posters.

Pickering had to first read out the more than 50 charges and alternative charges the three men faced in relation to the poaching of 13 rhino across the province.

The judgment is likely to take most of the day to read before the judge reaches the bottom line of whether or not the men are guilty.

At the core of the state’s case is the evidence seized in a raid of the three men’s chalet at the Makana holiday resort in Makahanda in June 2016. They were caught red-handed in the raid with a 10.27kg freshly harvested rhino horn valued at R1-million, a bloody saw, .22 dart gun and tranquiliser darts, M99 tranquiliser, cell phones and sim cards.

DNA evidence has linked both the blood on the saw and the horn to a magnificent white rhino named Campbell which had been poached the day before from the nearby Bucklands Game reserve.

From that one raid, the state has used what it seized to weave together a complex web of circumstantial evidence involving novel ballistic evidence from the dart gun, cell phone usage patterns, and car hire and movement patterns, to link the three men to 12 other rhino poaching cases with almost identical modus operandi.

Pickering will have to deal with all the complex evidence in his judgment before making his finding.

[Richprins]

Kruger National Park
‏ @SANParksKNP
Mar 23

Former SANParks Regional Ranger, Rodney Landela will be going on trial on Tuesday 26 March, to face charges related to poaching. He was arrested in the KNP by his fellow Rangers. The trial will start afresh after the untimely death of the presiding magistrate.

[Lisbeth]

rhinocase-MAIN-1600x917.jpg (121.15 KiB) Viewed 424 times

File photo: Rhino at the Tala Private Game Reserve on July 31, 2014 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Jackie Cla

KWAZULU-NATAL
Swift end to nearly 10-year rhino poaching trial

By Tony Carnie• 26 March 2019

Three poachers are finally convicted of killing a rhino in KwaZulu-Natal: A magistrate lost his patience after a decade of delays — prosecution and defence sources estimated that somewhere between 12 and 25 defence attorneys had been engaged and later dismissed by the accused.

One of the world’s longest rhino poaching trials came to a swift and decisive conclusion on Monday, 25 March when a Durban magistrate lost patience after nearly 10 years of “deliberate and unreasonable delays” by three men who tried, but ultimately failed, to drag out their trial indefinitely.

Convicting all three poachers based on the “overwhelming evidence” placed before him, senior Regional Court Magistrate Logan Naidoo declared that it would have been a travesty to allow the three men to continue holding the justice system to ransom any longer.

The three men, Muntugokwakhe Khoza, 50, Ayanda Buthelezi, 40, and SANDF officer Mduduzi Xulu, 51, were arrested on 26 August, 2009, hours after a rhino was gunned down in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve — the world cradle of white rhino conservation, where this species was brought back from the brink of extinction almost a century ago by the Natal Parks Board.

More than 7,000 rhinos have been slaughtered by poachers since 2008, with the Kruger National Park — the largest white rhino sanctuary in the world — losing almost half its white rhino population in a decade.


SA Police investigating officer Anton Steenberg (left) and Senior State Advocate Yuri Gangai celebrate the conviction of three rhino poachers after a trial that ended yesterday – just short of 10 years after the poachers were arrested. Photo: Tony Carnie

Magistrate Naidoo noted that Khoza and three accomplices were arrested just hours after the crime, when police and conservation officers intercepted them at a roadblock in a pick-up truck carrying a .303 rifle, two axes covered in blood and a pair of rhino horns that had been hacked off the dead animal.

The severed horns, with bone and tissue carved from the rhino’s skull, were later linked to the carcass of the poached animal, using DNA forensic evidence.

While some of the three accused claimed not to have known one another, cellphone recordings showed that they had communicated several times in the days leading up to the crime.

Khoza, who was arrested and convicted for another rhino horn offence while out on bail for the first crime, was then arrested for a third time for a similar offence after serving his sentence and being released on bail.

During this time, Khoza and his accomplices hired and fired several private or Legal Aid Board lawyers several times in an apparent attempt to drag out the proceedings and delay a final verdict.

Though the exact number of defence lawyers could not be established on Sunday night, prosecution and defence sources estimated that somewhere between 12 and 25 defence attorneys had been engaged and later dismissed by the three men.

The poachers tried the same tactic on Monday in the Durban Regional Court when they terminated the services of the latest batch of defence lawyers — Philani Mthethwa, Mohammed Moola and Vusi Ndlovu.

However, the magistrate and senior state advocate Yuri Gangai made it clear that they were fed up with a decade of delays.

Gangai said the trio’s latest bid to engage the service of a new legal representative was just the latest chapter in many attempts to delay the trial by engaging new attorneys “over and over and over again”.

“This is perhaps the longest-running trial I have ever been engaged in — certainly the longest rhino-poaching trial,” said Gangai, noting that Daily Maverick reported in February that Khoza had been arrested more than 3,400 days previously.

Magistrate Naidoo said that to ensure a scrupulously fair trial, he had granted numerous indulgences at the request of the accused — at a considerable financial cost to both the state and to many witnesses.


Muntugogkwakhe Khoza and his co-accused Ayanda Buthelezi (pictured after an earlier court appearance) were not smiling when they were convicted of rhino poaching yesterday afternoon. Picture: Tony Carnie

“The prosecutor has told us that this is possibly the longest-running (rhino poaching case) in the world. Justice delayed is justice denied. This court itself is brought into disrepute,” Naidoo said, saying he now had no choice but to proceed with the trial without granting further indulgences.

Xulu objected that he would take the case on review if he was not allowed to have another attorney to represent him, but the magistrate commented that he was welcome to take the case on judicial review at a later stage — but the point had been reached where Xulu and his co-accused would now have to conduct their own defence in the closing stages of the trial.

In his view, the three men had delayed the trial unreasonably and the court had the power to compel them to conduct their own defence in the circumstances.

“We must proceed today.”

Just hours later, after sitting through the lunch adjournment, the trial was completed with these words:

“The accused knew (the) game was up… the court has a duty to ensure that justice is done and seen to be done… and finds that the accused are guilty.”

After convicting Khoza, Buthelezi and Xulu all on eight charges related to rhino poaching — and revoking their bail — magistrate Naidoo indicated that he would adjourn the court for sentence on Tuesday.

[Flutterby]

What a long process!

[Lisbeth]

It will be interesting to see the length of the penalty

[Alf]

Why did they allow it to drag on for 10 years