A court in Sumatra’s East Aceh district court sentenced a 41-year-old farmer to three years in prison after he was found guilty in a wildlife trafficking case linked to international organized crime.Court documents show the farmer from East Aceh district accepted a delivery job driving a consignment in a small truck, and that he helped another individual transfer the protected wildlife at a meeting point in North Aceh district.Customs officials said they initiated an investigation following a tip from a member of the public. The customs office later said they believed the perpetrators intended to smuggle the animals to Thailand by boat from a small coastal village in Aceh.The presence of hornbills and numerous other species showed the animals were sourced from as far as eastern Indonesia, investigators said.
EAST ACEH, Indonesia — A court in Indonesia has sentenced a man in Aceh to three years in prison after investigators stopped him while driving a truck transporting dozens of live animals, among them a live Sumatran orangutan and two critically endangered birds.
A panel of three judges ruled on June 17 that 41-year-old Agussalim bin Abdul Hamib, a farmer from Sumatra’s Kuta Makmur subdistrict in the semiautonomous region of Aceh, accepted a job to deliver a consignment in a white Isuzu Traga, a common light commercial vehicle, on Jan. 30, 2026, in North Aceh district.
