Tuli men vanish into thin air

By Melanie-Ann Feris
November 23 1999 at 08:07PM

Two Indonesians who were scheduled to appear in the Brits Magistrate's Court on charges of cruelty to animals, along with game dealer Riccardo Ghiazza, have disappeared. 

Brits police have been unable to trace them to serve subpoenas on them. 

Captain Renate Barnard, branch commander of the Brits police station, said on Tuesday the police had the animal trainers' passports. "If they have left the country, they left with illegal documents," she said. 

The last known address of the mahouts is Africa Game Services, where they worked for Ghiazza. They have been implicated in the continued abuse of several elephants that Ghiazza brought out of the Tuli Block in Botswana last year. 

The mahouts were employed to train the elephants before the animals were sent to overseas zoos and safari parks. 

Ghiazza appeared in court alone on Monday on a charge of cruelty to animals. 

Jan van Rensburg, the attorney who represented the two mahouts, Augustinus Purwanto and Yanto Sugiyanto, during a court case earlier this year, said  he had had no contact with the men for three weeks. He has denied knowing their whereabouts. 

Gert Oelofse, senior prosecutor at the court, said the case was postponed to January.