BBC exposes global network of sadistic monkey torture; at least 20 people being investigated
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Customers in countries such as the US and UK pay Indonesians to torture and kill monkeys on film.
PHOTO: AFP
The BBC has exposed a sadistic global monkey torture ring, which stretches from Indonesia to the United States, after a year-long investigation.
Hundreds of customers in the US, United Kingdom and elsewhere pay Indonesians to torture and kill baby long-tailed macaques on film, the BBC found.
The network is said to have begun on YouTube and moved to private groups on the Telegram app.
BBC journalists went undercover in one of these Telegram torture groups and discovered that people in these groups come up with torture ideas and commission people to carry them out.
The goal is to create bespoke films in which baby long-tailed macaques are abused, tortured and sometimes killed.
An international effort is under way to bring the perpetrators to justice.
At least 20 people are now being investigated, according to the BBC. They include two key suspects being probed by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The BBC managed to track down the torturers in Indonesia, and distributors and buyers in the US.
One has been identified as Stacey Storey, a grandmother in her 40s who is known in the community as “Sadistic”. The other is a ringleader known as “Mr Ape”, whose real name has not been revealed for safety reasons.
In an interview with the BBC, “Mr Ape” confessed to being responsible for the deaths of at least four monkeys and the torture of many more, and also said he commissioned “extremely brutal” videos.
Storey, who is from the US state of Alabama, was active in a torture group as recently as early June. Her phone was seized by agents from DHS. They found around 100 torture videos, as well as evidence that Storey paid for the creation of some of the most extreme videos produced.
Storey and “Mr Ape” have yet to be charged, but they, along with at least three other key targets, could face up to seven years in prison if prosecuted.
In Indonesia, the police have arrested and charged two torture suspects.
Asep Yadi Nurul Hikmah was charged with animal torture and the sale of a protected species and was sentenced to three years in jail. M. Ajis Rasjana was sentenced to eight months’ jail, the maximum sentence in Indonesia for torturing an animal.
The torture videos are said to be still accessible on Telegram and even Facebook, according to the BBC, which said it found many groups sharing such extreme content. Some of these groups have more than 1,000 members.
Facebook told the BBC it had removed the groups that were brought to the technology company’s attention.
The company does not allow the “promotion of animal abuse on our platforms”, a spokesman said, adding that “we remove this content when we become aware of it”.
Similarly, YouTube told the BBC that animal abuse has “no place” on the platform. The company was “working hard to quickly remove violative content”, it said.
Telegram told The Straits Times the groups listed in the BBC report have been shut down by the platform’s moderators.
It added that the “promotion of violence is forbidden on Telegram, including animal cruelty”.
But while it patrols public-facing parts of its platform, “moderators cannot proactively patrol private groups”, it said in a statement.
“However, users can report content they encounter in private groups so that moderators can remove anything that breaches our terms of service,” Telegram said.
