In late January, Kenyan authorities arrested two men in possession of more than a hundred kilos of ivory in the town of Namanga, on the border with Tanzania. According to Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), police and wildlife officers were on a covert operation at a hotel when they caught three men — identified as Imani Manasi Msumbwa and Justin Mwalima, both Tanzanian, and Alton Jilaoneka, a Kenyan — likely negotiating a deal. Mwalima escaped; the remaining two led investigators to a car with 20 pieces of elephant tusks, weighing a total 110 kilograms (243 pounds). They were arrested, and news of the seizure made headlines. Since then, however, it’s not clear what progress has been made, either in finding the escaped suspect or in identifying the prospective buyer or the wider trafficking network. Despite repeated inquiries from Mongabay, Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) officials have declined to confirm whether those arrested were granted bail or if they remain in custody. Chris Morris, founder of Nairobi-based wildlife crime monitoring group Saving Elephants through Education and Justice (SEEJ), told Mongabay that the suspects are scheduled to appear in Kajiado Magistrate’s Court on April 28. SEEJ monitored more than 100 elephant ivory trafficking prosecutions between 2023 and 2025 to assess the integrity of law enforcement in pursuing trafficking cases beyond the headline arrests. Some of the offences date back to 2015. By the end of its two-year monitoring period, only 72 of the 125 cases had concluded, with a conviction rate of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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