Kenyan police arrested a fugitive wanted in the United States on charges of trafficking ivory and rhino horn, who arrived in the coastal city of Mombasa from Yemen, authorities said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
Abubakar Mansur Mohammed Surur was detained for alleged “ivory-related offenses” after he landed in a chartered plane, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations said on Twitter.
In a June 2019 indictment, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration charged Surur and three others with conspiracy to traffic at least 190 kilograms of rhino horn and 10 tons of
ivory worth more than US$7 million. Surur was also charged with conspiracy to launder money and distribute heroin.
“We have been looking for him for the past two years and on Monday we got information that he would be among 33 passengers flying to Mombasa from Yemen via a Skywood aircraft,” Hamisi
Masa, head of Kenya’s anti-narcotics police unit, told Reuters via telephone.
Masa said Interpol was also involved in the arrest and that Surur was being held in Mombasa port’s police station.
The DEA said last year that Surur and another Kenyan, Abdi Hussein Ahmed “Abu Khadi”, were on the run while a Liberian suspect was in custody in the United States and a Guinean suspect detained in Senegal pending extradition.
Kenya also has an extradition treaty with the United States.
“We are discussing the way forward about him because he is also needed by authorities in the U.S.,” Masa said.