Zimbabwe is seeking the extradition of Walter Palmer, the American dentist who killed a famous lion named Cecil, which was being tracked in a university study.
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“It is with huge disgust and sadness that we have just been informed that Jericho, Cecil’s brother has been killed” at 4 p.m. (10 a.m. ET), the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said in a statement on Facebook. I hired several professional guides and they secured all proper permits.
Zimbabwe has suspended the hunting of lions, leopards and elephants in an area where a lion popular with tourists was killed, and is investigating the killing of another lion in April that may have been illegal, the country’s wildlife authority said Saturday. News, on Thursday, the White House said it will give its attention to the more than 100,000 signatures in favor of the extradition.
She said both Palmer and professional hunter Theo Bronkhorst violated the Parks and Wildlife Act, which controls the use of bow and arrow hunting. “For inquiries regarding any law enforcement aspects of the case, we refer you to the Government of Zimbabwe or the Department of Justice”.
Palmer is believed to have shot the lion with a bow on July 1 outside Hwange National Park, after it was lured onto private land with a carcass of an animal laid out on a auto.
Lawyer Alec Muchadehama told Reuters that no American had been extradited to Zimbabwe since the treaty was signed, adding that Harare faced legal and political hurdles.
They pursued Cecil for 40 hours before Palmer killed him with a gun.
Muchinguri accused Palmer of “a well-orchestrated agenda which would tarnish the image of Zimbabwe and further strain the relationship between Zimbabwe and the USA”.
“They [U.S. courts] may actually doubt the competence of the judiciary here to try him in an objective manner, particularly given these prejudicial pronouncements that the politicians are already making”, Mr. Muchadehama said.
Palmer, 55, is a dentist in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington. “We ask Dr Palmer or his rep to contact USFWS immediately”, the US Fish and Wildlife Service wrote in a Twitter post. The authority said it only received information this week about the possibly illegal killing of a lion in April.
Gabon Foreign Minister Emmanuel Issoze-Ngondet said he hoped the UN resolution would stop wildlife poaching, noting that the investigation by Zimbabwean authorities into the killing of Cecil was still ongoing.
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He added that there had been no reports so far of Cecil’s many cubs being killed by rival male lions, as often happens when the alpha male in a pride dies.
