Customers in countries such as the US and UK pay Indonesians to torture and kill the monkeys on film. - AFP
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): The BBC has uncovered a sadistic global monkey torture ring, which stretches from Indonesia to the US, after a year-long investigation.
Hundreds of customers in the US, UK 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.
Journalists from the BBC 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 both 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, which is the maximum sentence for torturing an animal in Indonesia.
The torture videos are still said to be accessible on Telegram and even Facebook, where the BBC 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 tech 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 animal abuse has “no place” on the platform. The company was “working hard to quickly remove violative content”, it said in a statement.
On its part, Telegram said it was “committed to protecting user privacy and human rights such as freedom of speech”. It added that its moderators “cannot proactively patrol private groups”.
