LA FIN DE L'IMPUNITE?

Le durcissement des peines à l'encontre des braconniers de tigre de l'Amour est une première dans le Primorye aux mains d'une mafia russo - chinoise.

Le tribunal qui jugeait aujourd'hui un homme qui avait abattu un tigre en juin de cette année a t-il voulu marquer un changement d'époque en ce domaine?

November 24, Ussuriysk, Russia. Magistrate of a court in the Primorsky Krai, a Russian South Far Eastern territory, found Sergey Burtsev guilty of killing a female tiger in June 2010 in the surroundings of Krounovka village.

The court imposed a fine of 150 thousand rubles ($4800) as punishment and additional fine of 575 125 rubles ($18 400) as a compensation for the environmental damage to the State. Sergey Burtsev already paid $1600, and the court confiscated his two illegally possessed plain-barrel guns.

“I’m very satisfied with the court decision”, says Pavel Fomenko, biodiversity coordinator at WWF-Russia Amur branch. “We had an opportunity to provide the quality of expertise and full evidence needed for the case on illegal hunting. Finally, the law triumphed in a tiger case. I hope that from now on, tiger killers will be prosecuted without mercy”.

"We are planning to toughen punishment for tiger poaching and for the criminal business on these animals”, said Russian Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin in his introduction speech at the International Tiger Conservation Forum in St. Petersburg.

“The planned legislative changes are very relevant and timely because at present tiger poachers can’t even be sentenced to imprisonment”, says Gennady Zherebkin, law enforcement advisor of the WWF-Russia Amur branch. “The latest court decision on tiger killing is one of the few cases when a tiger poacher was found guilty of a criminal offence. A similar sentenced was passed in the Primorsky region in 2004. It doesn’t mean that during 6 years in between no one killed tigers. It’s just that unfortunately, such crimes are difficult to prosecute. In this case we won thanks to cooperation between environmentalists, law enforcement authorities and judiciary”.