- A court in Sumatra’s East Aceh district court sentenced a 41-year-old farmer to three years in prison after he was found guilty in a wildlife trafficking case linked to international organized crime.
- Court documents show the farmer from East Aceh district accepted a delivery job driving a consignment in a small truck, and that he helped another individual transfer the protected wildlife at a meeting point in North Aceh district.
- Customs officials said they initiated an investigation following a tip from a member of the public. The customs office later said they believed the perpetrators intended to smuggle the animals to Thailand by boat from a small coastal village in Aceh.
- The presence of hornbills and numerous other species showed the animals were sourced from as far as eastern Indonesia, investigators said.
EAST ACEH, Indonesia — A court in Indonesia has sentenced a man in Aceh to three years in prison after investigators stopped him while driving a truck transporting dozens of live animals, among them a live Sumatran orangutan and two critically endangered birds.
A panel of three judges ruled on June 17 that 41-year-old Agussalim bin Abdul Hamib, a farmer from Sumatra’s Kuta Makmur subdistrict in the semiautonomous region of Aceh, accepted a job to deliver a consignment in a white Isuzu Traga, a common light commercial vehicle, on Jan. 30, 2026, in North Aceh district.
“We very much appreciate this legal ruling — this is an important lesson for the perpetrators and the wider community to refrain from engaging in illegal activities,” said Dwi Harmawanto, head of the customs and excise office in Langsa city.
The original indictment published by the district court listed 82 live animals recovered by customs officers. Civil society organizations said it was the largest wildlife crime case tried in Aceh in years.
The seized consignment also contained four dead Moluccan parrots (Eclectus roratus), which are currently listed as least concern on the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species owing to its wide distribution in eastern Indonesia. In addition, investigators found a large number of frozen horseshoe crabs, and some skulls of dead animals.
Prosecutors successfully proved Agussalim helped load the truck at a meeting point in the village of Alue Bili in the subdistrict of Baktiya. They said he was aware the cargo of 82 live animals included a Sumatran orangutan (Pongo Abelii) as well as dozens of caged birds, which included the critically endangered yellow-crested cockatoo (Cacatua sulphurea).
The shipment contained other protected species, including three langurs (Presbytis comata), 13 Moluccan cockatoos (Cacatua moluccensis), nine lesser birds-of-paradise (Paradisaea minor), five Sulawesi hornbills (Rhabdotorrhinus exarhatus), one great hornbill (Buceros bicornis), and one Wilson’s bird-of-paradise (Cicinnurus respublica), among others.
The sentence did not include a fine for Agussalim after judges took into account his financial standing.
The customs office in Langsa said detectives believed individuals intended to place the animals on a boat to Thailand, which is around 300 kilometers (186 miles) across the Malacca Strait from the village of Pante Bayam.
Wildlife trafficking is a reoccurring issue
Data from conservation agency TRAFFIC showed at least 31 wildlife trafficking cases between Indonesia and Thailand over the last decade.
“The seizure in January is clearly not an isolated case,” TRAFFIC Southeast Asia director Kanitha Krishnasamy said in March. “It reveals a deeply entrenched network linking the two countries, for both native and non-native species that are highly threatened. The urgency for stronger scrutiny and coordinated action by both countries cannot be overstated.”
Home to one of the world’s largest tropical forest estates and vast biodiversity, Indonesia remains a major front in the global illegal wildlife trade, a market the UN has valued at $23 billion a year.
A month after investigators pulled over Agussalim in Aceh, customs officials in the capital Jakarta, uncovered more than $10 million in pangolin scales, an ingredient in Chinese medicine, hidden in a shipping container. Authorities have since arrested one person.
In March, reporters from investigative news publisher Bellingcat and Mongabay revealed that threatened species were sold openly on Facebook, despite the social network’s parent company, Meta, pledging to end illegal wildlife transactions on its platforms.
The joint law enforcement operation that led to the conviction of Agussalim was conducted by the customs office in Langsa city, the East Aceh district police, the Ministry of Forestry’s law enforcement division, and the national conservation agency (BKSDA) in the semiautonomous region of Aceh.
“We’ll continue to work with all law enforcement agencies as well as members of the public to ensure that the smuggling of protected animals does not happen again,” customs lead Dwi Harmawanto said.
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Banner image: Perpetrators were attempting to smuggle these hornbills in a car from Aceh, but were caught by officers in a joint operation. Image courtesy of Langsa Customs.
This story was first published here in Indonesian on June 21, 2026.
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Cite this article
Junaidi Hanafiah (2026). Indonesia driver sentenced over organized crime group trafficking live orangutan. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-321753
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