Indonesia busts Russian smuggling drugged orangutan

This handout picture taken and released on March 23, 2019 by the Natural Resources Conservation Agency of Bali shows a rescued two-year-old orangutan resting inside a rattan basket, after a smuggling attempt by a Russian tourist at Bali's international airport in Denpasar. (AFP)

This handout picture taken and released on March 23, 2019 by the Natural Resources Conservation Agency of Bali shows a caregiver bottle-feeding a rescued two-year-old orangutan after a smuggling attempt by a Russian tourist at Bali's international airport in Denpasar. (AFP)

This handout picture taken and released on March 23, 2019 by the Natural Resources Conservation Agency of Bali shows officials with detained Russian national Andrei Zhestkov (C), accused of smuggling a two-year-old orangutan in a rattan basket, at Bali's international airport in Denpasar. (AFP)

• Orangutans are a critically endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 100,000 remaining worldwide

DENPASAR, Indonesia: A Russian tourist attempting to smuggle a drugged orangutan out of Indonesia in his suitcase to bring home and keep as a pet has been arrested in Bali, police said Saturday.
Andrei Zhestkov was detained in Denpasar airport late on Friday while passing through a security screening before a planned flight back to Russia.
Suspicious officers stopped him and opened his luggage to find a two-year-old male orangutan sleeping inside a rattan basket.
“We believe the orangutan was fed allergy pills which caused him to sleep. We found the pills inside the suitcase,” Bali conservation agency official I Ketut Catur Marbawa told AFP Saturday.
“(Zhestkov) seemed prepared, like he was transporting a baby,” he added.
The 27-year-old also packed baby formula and blankets for the orangutan, Marbawa said.
Police also found two live geckos and five lizards inside the suitcase.
Zhestkov told authorities that the protected species was gifted by his friend, another Russian tourist who bought the primate for $3,000 from a street market in Java.
He claimed his friend, who has since left Indonesia, convinced him he could bring home the orangutan as a pet.
The Russian could face up to five years in prison and $7,000 in fines for smuggling, Marbawa said.
Orangutans are a critically endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 100,000 remaining worldwide.
Plantation workers and villagers in Indonesia often consider the apes pests and sometimes attack them, while poachers capture the animals to sell as pets.
A string of fatal attacks on the apes have been blamed on farmers and hunters.
Four Indonesian men were arrested last year over the killing of an orangutan shot some 130 times with an air gun.