Mozambican police arrested a Vietnamese citizen in possession of six rhino horns, weighing about 17 kilo, at the Maputo international airport, the Mozambique News Agency (AIM) said Monday. The Vietnamese identified as Ho Chien was arrested as he was about to embark on an international flight on Sunday.
Ho had packed the rhino horns in a suitcase containing clothing, according to AIM. Each horn had been wrapped in tinfoil and surrounded with garlic in an attempt to disguise the smell of rotting flesh. The horns presumably came from rhinos poached in South Africa, AIM said, indicating the rhino is believed to be extinct in southern Mozambique.
The police did not reveal the suspect's final destination. But if he was returning to Vietnam, he could have sold the horns for up to 65,000 U. S. dollars a kilo, the report said, adding that 17 kilo would have netted him about 1.1 million dollars.
Last year, the Mozambican police arrested three Vietnamese citizens at the airport in the northern city of Pemba, where they were trying to smuggle rhino horns out of the country. In early January, police in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh city arrested a man named Ha Cha Chinh, who arrived from Maputo via Doha, carrying six rhino horns weighing 16.5 kilo.
The demand for rhino horns in part of Asia is driven by absurd beliefs that the powdered horn is a cure for various diseases from hangovers to cancer. In reality, rhino horn has no medicinal qualities, since it is mostly made of keratin, the same protein found in human hair and fingernails, according to exports.