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million in fines. Schutte is indicted on twocounts, which carry a maximum ten-year jail term. In December, prosecutors charge two more people with aiding the conspiracy: Kenneth R. Hussey, fifty-one, and Joseph F. Riley, forty-one. Both had helped Lukman raise funds for his South West African adventure.
While the Americans gather their evidence in preparation for the case against Lukman, the SADF is hard at work covering its tracks. On 7 December 1988, a few weeks after the inquiry was announced, the public relations department issues a turgid press release. It is a whitewash. The Roos board of inquiry ‘found there was no evidence to prove that the defence force was responsible for, or involved in, the killing of elephants … The board also found that the figures given for the elephant population in Angola in Mr van Note’s report could not be substantiated.’
It quotes ‘leading conservationists’, who place the elephant population at ‘no more than 12 400’.
‘We take exception to being regarded as the outlaws of the wildlife world, which indicates [Van Note’s] obvious lack of knowledge regarding wildlife matters in South Africa.’
9 February 1989
Hussey is the first to take a plea, admitting his guilt and confessing to investing $25 000 in Lukman’s scheme. He is later fined $2 500. Then Lukman falls on his sword. On 23 February 1989, he pleads guilty to four counts, including the sale of the stuffed leopard to Saada, the importation of an AK-47 and the smuggling of two rhino horns. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors ditch thirteen other charges. His girlfriend, McAllister, follows suit, admitting to her role in the shipment of a leopard skin. Two charges against her are dropped.
Then news breaks that South African authorities are willing to co-operate. Twardy is quoted as saying that they recently determined ‘this is an extraditablecase’. On 20 April, Lukman’s attorney turns over a package to the ATF that had been posted in South West Africa. Inside are sixteen AK-47 magazines and two Soviet F-1 grenades.
It takes another four months before Lukman is sentenced. With barely concealed contempt, the judge describes Lukman as having been part of an ‘international netherworld of marginal characters who deal in guns, join foreign armies and associate with mercenaries’. Lukman is sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison, fined $20 000 and ordered to spend three years under supervision by federal authorities after his release. Not quite seventy-seven years. The other accused are fined between $100 and $10 000 and released on probation. Mary Ann McAllister gets a year’s probation and a $250 fine.
It is more than a year before the South Africans make a move on Meiring. By then he’s left the SADF. On 19 March 1990, he and Pat are picked up by members of the police’s fugitive tracing unit in Berea in central Johannesburg. Initial reports are scant on details. The Afrikaans daily newspaper,
Beeld
, states simply that the couple appeared briefly in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court and describes the charges for which they are being sought in the US as ‘related to ivory smuggling’. There is little information about the mysterious Sergeant Major Meiring.
Meiring, it later emerges, cut his teeth in combat with the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) in the 1970s as Ian Smith’s regime fought an increasingly futile war against black liberation fighters. When black rule became inevitable, Meiring – like many other disgruntled members of his unit – crossed over to South Africa and joined the SADF.
There, according to military historian Peter Stiff, he assumed control of fifty former members of the RAR. The black soldiers were stationed at Gumbu Mine, a makeshift forward-operating base near the Zimbabweanborder, seven kilometres north-east of Messina (later Musina), as it was known then. In August 1982, ironically on Friday the thirteenth, an assault force with men from Meiring’s group
While the Americans gather their evidence in preparation for the case against Lukman, the SADF is hard at work covering its tracks. On 7 December 1988, a few weeks after the inquiry was announced, the public relations department issues a turgid press release. It is a whitewash. The Roos board of inquiry ‘found there was no evidence to prove that the defence force was responsible for, or involved in, the killing of elephants … The board also found that the figures given for the elephant population in Angola in Mr van Note’s report could not be substantiated.’
It quotes ‘leading conservationists’, who place the elephant population at ‘no more than 12 400’.
‘We take exception to being regarded as the outlaws of the wildlife world, which indicates [Van Note’s] obvious lack of knowledge regarding wildlife matters in South Africa.’
9 February 1989
Hussey is the first to take a plea, admitting his guilt and confessing to investing $25 000 in Lukman’s scheme. He is later fined $2 500. Then Lukman falls on his sword. On 23 February 1989, he pleads guilty to four counts, including the sale of the stuffed leopard to Saada, the importation of an AK-47 and the smuggling of two rhino horns. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors ditch thirteen other charges. His girlfriend, McAllister, follows suit, admitting to her role in the shipment of a leopard skin. Two charges against her are dropped.
Then news breaks that South African authorities are willing to co-operate. Twardy is quoted as saying that they recently determined ‘this is an extraditablecase’. On 20 April, Lukman’s attorney turns over a package to the ATF that had been posted in South West Africa. Inside are sixteen AK-47 magazines and two Soviet F-1 grenades.
It takes another four months before Lukman is sentenced. With barely concealed contempt, the judge describes Lukman as having been part of an ‘international netherworld of marginal characters who deal in guns, join foreign armies and associate with mercenaries’. Lukman is sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison, fined $20 000 and ordered to spend three years under supervision by federal authorities after his release. Not quite seventy-seven years. The other accused are fined between $100 and $10 000 and released on probation. Mary Ann McAllister gets a year’s probation and a $250 fine.
It is more than a year before the South Africans make a move on Meiring. By then he’s left the SADF. On 19 March 1990, he and Pat are picked up by members of the police’s fugitive tracing unit in Berea in central Johannesburg. Initial reports are scant on details. The Afrikaans daily newspaper,
Beeld
, states simply that the couple appeared briefly in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court and describes the charges for which they are being sought in the US as ‘related to ivory smuggling’. There is little information about the mysterious Sergeant Major Meiring.
Meiring, it later emerges, cut his teeth in combat with the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) in the 1970s as Ian Smith’s regime fought an increasingly futile war against black liberation fighters. When black rule became inevitable, Meiring – like many other disgruntled members of his unit – crossed over to South Africa and joined the SADF.
There, according to military historian Peter Stiff, he assumed control of fifty former members of the RAR. The black soldiers were stationed at Gumbu Mine, a makeshift forward-operating base near the Zimbabweanborder, seven kilometres north-east of Messina (later Musina), as it was known then. In August 1982, ironically on Friday the thirteenth, an assault force with men from Meiring’s group
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