The Beijing Railway Transport Intermediate Court has sentenced a doctor-turned trader, who was found guilty of illegally trading 67 antelope horns worth of 2.4 million yuan (US$289,000), to 11 years in prison.
The horn seller, Chen Chonghuai, was also deprived of his political rights for one year and fined 50,000 yuan (about US$6,000).
Chen, a native of Yuanping city in north China's Shanxi province, was a traditional Chinese doctor and a long-time trader of raw materials for traditional Chinese medicine, according to court sources.
Last December, he did not sell all the horns he had at a medicine market in Hebei province, and was arrested by police at a railway station on his return to Yuanping on December 30 last year.
Chen was convicted by the court even though he said he was unaware of the law banning the trading of any parts of endangered species like antelope and insisted that he took antelope horns simply as medicinal material.
In 1988, China issued the Law on the Protection of Wildlife.
(Xinhua News Agency August 22, 2002)
