Hanoi - Hanoi police have arrested three men who were found
illegally transporting a disemboweled tiger carcass and a tiger
skeleton, a police official said Thursday.
'It took us about a month to bust this case,' said Tran Quang
Cuong of Hanoi's Environmental Police Agency, which arrested the men
as they were transporting the tigers in their car. He said they
confessed their crimes.
Police identified the three men involved in the case as Hoang Van
Su, 36, the owner of the tiger carcass, Nguyen Trung Phong, the car's
driver and Su's friend who accompanied him to transport the tigers
from central province of Thanh Hoa to sell to his contact in Hanoi.
The disemboweled tiger carcass, weighing some 60 kilograms, had
been frozen. A package containing 11 kilograms of tiger skeleton was
also recovered.
Cuong said the evidence was sent to the Soc Son Wildlife Rescue
Centre, near Hanoi.
Doctor Pham Trong Anh of the Institute for Ecology and Biological
Resources said the tigers are native to East Asia and Southern Asia
and are classified as endangered by the World Conservation Union.
Dan Tri Newspaper on Thursday said a kilogram of fresh-frozen
tiger meat costs about 20 million dong (1,130 dollars).
Tiger bones and other parts are often used in traditional
Vietnamese medicine. 'Tiger paste' - made from boiling the bones of
the tiger and said to restore the bones of the elderly - can sell for
as much as 5,000 dollars a kilogram on the black market.
Less than 100 of the cats are believed to survive in the wild in
Vietnam, where habitat loss and poaching have taken a heavy toll on
endangered flora and fauna in recent decades.
According to Vietnamese law, those hunting, transporting or
trading in rare animals are subject to a prison term of up to seven
years and a cash fine of up to 1,250 dollars.
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