Bangkok, August 27 – A Bangkok luxury store owner was convicted Monday of importing and selling “shahtoosh” shawls made from the wool of endangered Tibetan antelopes that had been shot by poachers, said the Asean Wildlife Enforcement Network in a statement. A Thai court sentenced the store owner, Reyaz Ahmad Mir, an Indian national from Kashmir, to two years in prison after he pleaded guilty to charges of illegally trading shawls made from the highly prized wool. Police confiscated shawls worth at least 20,000 dollars.
Tibetan antelopes have been hunted for their wool as far as anyone can remember but today’s poachers are much more indiscriminate than in the past, killing even pregnant deer, said Traffic International, a charity that supports local wildlife efforts. One shawl is normally made from three to five dead antelopes, the Asean-WEN statement added.
The Bangkok case was closely followed by Asian wildlife protection agencies because the trade has continued despite clear bans and tough laws. A second and larger case against other Bangkok-based traffickers in shahtoosh is pending.
The shawls sell for up to 12,000 dollars each on the black market, according to Traffic. There are now thought to be as few as 50,000 Tibetan antelopes, also known as chiru, in the wild. There as many as 1 million roaming the Tibet plateau a century ago.
Thailand’s wildlife-crime task force spent four months in undercover investigations before the high-end shahtoosh stores in Bangkok were raided in July 2006. The three Indian nationals arrested during the raid told undercover investigators their customers were normally wealthy tourists.
“This case is a breakthrough. It demonstrates that when law enforcement officers and conservationists work together across agency and national boundaries, the illegal wildlife traffickers have less chance of getting away with these heinous crimes,” said Steven Galster, director of field operations for Wildlife Alliance in Thailand, a non-governmental organization that helped tip off the police about the shatoosh trade.
The Asean Wildlife Enforcement Network was established in 2006 by the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations with the mission of targeting the criminal gangs behind the region’s burgeoning illegal trade in wildlife.
US government forensic experts of the US Fish and Wildlife Service travelled to Bangkok last December to verify that shawls derived from the endangered species. The defendants initially claimed the shawls were fakes and therefore not illegal.
