Tuli elephants torturer fined less than 7.000 US$

Animal Rights Groups asked court to jail the culprits.
Ruling influenced by public demand and judge's response.

Pretoria / South Africa · 30.07.2003
A South African court fined a big-game trader and his
former employee 25.000 Rand, the equivalent being less
than $ 7.000 (6.840.-), on 29.08.03 for their part in the
brutal beating of elephant calves, which was secretly
videotaped and broadcast on television.

Riccardo Ghiazza, who imported under still mysterious and
unclear circumstances 30 young elephants to South Africa
from Botswana in 1998, and his former employee Wayne
Stockigt were found guilty in April for their part in the assault,
which had been taped by hidden camera and broadcast by
Carte Blanche on pay-per-view channel M-NET in 1999.

The video, taped by an official from the South African National
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, showed the
helpless juvenile elephants being mercilessly beaten with sticks
until they bled at Ghiazza’s African Game Services outside
Pretoria.

The 30 elephants have since been sold for high profit to zoos
in Europe and game reserves in South Africa. The import of
four ele-babies by a clandestine flight into Germany, whose
responsible Ministry apparently had not permitted the import,
is still disputed and the repatriation of those elephants to
Africa demanded.

The South African magistrate of dutch ancestry, while hearing
the case against the two men accused of cruelty to baby
elephants, told the court he had been upset by “uncalled for,
inappropriate and blatant” attempts to influence him before
sentencing the accused.

Magistrate Adriaan Bekker said on Tuesday before sentencing
Ricardo Ghiazza, 50, for cruelty to animals that he had received
six faxes, some from the United States and the United Kingdom,
in which animal welfare organizations and activists urged him to
impose the maximum penalty.

Therefore Bekker ruled that Ghiazza’s business, African Game
Services, of which he is the only director, was fined 15.000 Rand
on one charge and 10.000 Rand on a second. Ghiazza was also
sentenced to six months in jail, but suspended for five years.

Wayne Stockigt, 36, was fined 10.000 Rand (or six months) and
given a six-month sentence, also suspended for five years.

Bekker said Ghiazza, found guilty of mistreating the Tuli baby
elephants, and Stockigt, found guilty of a contravening the Animal
Protection Act, had already been punished by society.

“Unlike my ‘learned friends’ of the faxes who asked for
imprisonment, I am not convinced that would be appropriate.

“I considered it, but both are first offenders and, if one looks at this
case objectively since 1998, when it started, the accused have been
shamed in public and became marked men,” Bekker said.

The Act prescribed a maximum sentence of a fine or one year in jail
or both.

He believed animal welfare organizations would scrutinize the actions
of the accused in future and was sure that would be a deterrent.

He said sentencing was not intended to destroy or humiliate an accused.
“There was an outcry from animal welfare organizations but the court is
not there to serve public opinion,” Bekker said.

“This outrage does not necessarily reflect the feelings of the whole of
society but it seems to me that the community at large found these
methods of training (the elephants) unacceptable”, stated Bekker.

Animal Rights Groups are outraged over the judgement and feel
that Judge Bekker misused public demand for the highest possible
sentence to let Ghiazza slip off the hook. "Would you let a rapist
get away with the minimum fine only because the public is outraged
over the crime?", asked one observer and another one stated:
"Ghiazza got away with such a small fine, which animal-slave-traders
like him can pay out of the petty-cash-box, that we have to be now
even more alert, because that ruling sends the signal: Wildlife and
animal crime still pays off in South-Africa and elsewhere!"

Sources: The Mercury (By Hanti Otto), IOL, The New Zealand
Herald and own correspondents in South Africa.