Two police officers have been arrested while in possession of Sh4.9 million worth of ivory tusks in Athi River, Machakos county.
The duo, according to police, was nabbed along the Nairobi–Mombasa highway within Kyumbi Township.
The matter was reported to Kyumbi police station as the arrest of police officers.
Police said the officers were arrested by their two colleagues.
“The KWS officers both of KWS headquarters, Nairobi, acting on a tip managed to arrest the officers. One of the suspects, a female police constable, is attached to a station in Mirangine subcounty while the other, APC of Critical Infrastructure Protection Unit, Karatina, in possession of eight pieces of ivory tusks weighing 49 Kg valued at Sh4.9 million,” a police report seen by the Star read in part.
The consignment, according to police, was recovered from a motor vehicle the suspects were using.
The scene was processed by the Scene of Crime personnel accompanied by OC DCI Kyumbi police station.
The suspects were later handed over to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations detectives attached to Kenya Wildlife Service assisted by the Lang’ata-based KWS officers.
Police said the exhibits had been enumerated in an inventory pending arraignment in court.
The DCI, KWS has launched a probe into the incident.
Ivory tasks trade is outlawed in Kenya and punishable within the provisions of the law.
In July of 1989, Kenya’s then-President, Daniel Arap Moi, symbolically set light on the Kenya Wildlife Service’s 12-tonne stockpile of seized ivory.
This would be the first of five such ivory-destruction events in Kenyan history.
Paul Udoto, then a spokesperson for the KWS, stated at the time that the burn event was a “desperate measure meant to send a message to the world about the destruction through poaching of Kenya’s elephants”.
In April 2016, then Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta publicly burned a large stockpile of confiscated ivory tusks, essentially destroying them to send a strong message against the illegal ivory trade and poaching of elephants, signifying that ivory is "worth more alive" to the animals than on the market.
More than 100 tonnes of ivory was stacked up in pyres in Nairobi National Park where it burned for several days.
The ivory represented nearly the entire stock confiscated by Kenya, amounting to the tusks of about 6,700 elephants.
