Philippine Court Experiments with ‘Creative Penology’ to Address Illegal Fishing
By Bonar A. Laureto, bonar_lawofnature@yahoo.com

Four fishermen could have seen the last of the lighthouse after they were found guilty of illegal fishing. But after they pleaded guilty of the crime and entered into a plea-bargaining deal, the Bogo Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Northern Cebu spared them from the jailhouse and instead ordered them to be protectors of the seas.

As part of the deal, the accused Adriano Ilustrisimo, Rosendo Rosalejos, Jr., Edgar Desabille and Melino Putong will be fish wardens once a week for the duration of their two-year prison terms. As sea guardians, they have joined the Visayan Sea Squadron and are now helping put up marine sanctuaries around the Visayan Sea. The Visayan Sea Squadron is a group of volunteer citizens and law enforcement elements who patrol the Visayan Sea to restore what is known to be the richest marine waters on the planet Earth.

This recent landmark decision rendered by Bogo RTC Judge Antonio Marigomen introduces the idea of ‘creative penology’ against illegal fishing. “The innovation aims not only to penalize illegal fishermen, but more importantly, to rehabilitate and transform them to be protectors of the very marine environment they once destroyed,” said Professor Durwood Zaelke, Director General of the Washington, DC-based International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (INECE). “It should serve as a model for other judicial systems around the world in the handling of environment and natural resources-related offenses,” Zaelke added.

The accused were arrested last May 19 off the waters of Sta. Fe, Bantayan Island, Cebu, while a group of lawyers, judges, prosecutors and NBI-Visayan Sea Squadron (VSSq) Operatives were holding an Environmental Law Training seminar in the Bantayan Island SEA Camp. In a dramatic seaborne operation of the NBI-VSSq scuba divers, evidence of dynamited fish which were earlier thrown away by the accused were recovered and used as evidence.

For more information, contact Bonar A. Laureto.

Basel Convention Secretariat Investigates Illegal Waste Transport
Reprinted from the MEA Bulletin, International Institute for Sustainable Development, Issue No. 12, 14 September 2006.

The Basel Convention Secretariat is investigating, at the request of the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, whether toxic material dumped in the Côte d’Ivoire last month by a Panamanian-registered ship is linked to illegal exports from Europe, since European Union law implementing the Basel Convention prohibits all exports of hazardous wastes from EU members to developing countries.

The toxic material was dumped from the Probo Koala, a Greek-owned vessel that was chartered by a Netherlands-based company, during the night of 19 August 2006 on to about ten open-air sites in the city of Abidjan. To date, three children have reportedly died and up to 5000 people affected after inhaling fumes from the dumped substances. Greenpeace said the waste comprised 400 tons of oil refining waste, rich in organic matter and poisonous elements.

The Basel Secretariat is also trying to assess where the legal responsibility for the disaster lies and if eventually the Convention’s trust fund could be tapped to support clean-up operations. (Click here for more information).

The Secretariat has also posted draft notification and movement documents which, according to decision OEWG-V/13, Germany was requested, in consultation with the Small Intersessional Working Group, to prepare.

The draft revised versions of the forms for the notification document and the movement document include instructions on how to use the forms and take into account comments from Parties and others. Comments containing suggestions for changes were received from Canada and Japan (http://www.basel.int/techmatters/harmonization/germany-forms-280806.doc).

The Secretariat has announced that the German-developed PROSOLwaste, an international information tool for supporting implementation of the Basel Convention, has gone on-line. This query-response system for waste management helps countries, cities and companies around the world with answers to technical, financial or organizational questions (http://www.prosolwaste.com).

In preparation for COP-8, the Secretariat has also recently released two new documents: a proposed decision on the Strategic Plan for the Implementation of the Basel Convention to 2010 (http://www.basel.int/meetings/cop/cop8/docs/02e.doc) and a proposed decision on transmission of information (http://www.basel.int/meetings/cop/cop8/docs/04e.doc).

Philippine Gov’t Targets Illegal Loggers, Polluters
Reprinted from Asia Pulse, August 22, 2006

The Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) announced on Tuesday plans to develop a five-year program of action directed toward synchronizing all activities of the government and civic groups in enforcing environmental laws.

DENR Secretary Angelo T. Reyes said the country needs to have a cohesive program of action against "environmental criminals".

He blamed dispersed efforts and initiatives in enforcement of environmental laws as reason why environmental protection remains a problem despite sufficient sound environmental policies.

"The mere existence of environmental laws does not guarantee environmental protection, they must be strictly enforced and implemented in order to reach the desired policy objective," Reyes said in a speech read for him by DENR Undersecretary Roy. V. Kyamko, also deputy head of the National Anti-Environmental Crime Task Force (NAECTAF).

Reyes' remarks came at the opening of a three-day high-level talks at the 1st National Environmental Law Enforcement Summit being held from August 21-23, 2006 at SEAMEO-InfoTech in Quezon City attended by 150 delegates from government, local and international environmental organizations.

With the summit's theme "Synchronizing Efforts to Combat Environmental Crimes", the talks are a major test to the government's efforts to consolidate environmental law enforcement following the issuance of Executive Order No. 515 by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, creating the NAECTAF headed by the DENR Secretary and operates under the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC).

NAECTAF's members include designated representatives from the DENR, Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of National Defense (DND), Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Agriculture (DA) and other law enforcement agencies/groups.

Reyes stressed that synchronizing efforts and resources in enforcing environmental laws should be "equally long term and adaptable" noting that environmental crime is a long-term threat that takes on a global, regional and local proportions.

"Inter-agency and even international cooperation, more than ever, becomes an integral part of how we must deal with environmental crimes," Reyes explained.

Results from the summit conference will bear greatly on the manner by which the country can face new trend of non-traditional threats challenging the enforcement of environmental laws which, according to Reyes, "are assuming increasingly a transnational character, functioning by way of networks and connections across national borders." "If we are to defeat them, we also need to intensify cooperation, and that includes a better sharing of information and intelligence, when necessary," Reyes said.

Reyes cited, for example, the study made by the Basel action Network which says that 99 per cent of all wastes smuggled to developing countries like the Philippines, in collusion with local ports and Customs officers, is misdeclared or mislabeled as "recyclable materials." "Studies even show that illicit waste transport is the second most profitable form of illegal trafficking, next only to drugs, while an estimated 387 million birds, reptiles and mammals from the wild are illegally caught by poachers each year worldwide."

The summit arose from a series of consultations by NAECTAF with various organizations involved in local environment projects such as the Untied States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International (CI), Marine Aquarium Council (MAC), and the United States Department of the Interior.

NGO Alleges US Border Agents Allowing Illegal Mahogany Imports

Department of Homeland Security and two other federal agencies are allowing contraband Peruvian mahogany to enter the United States, according to a lawsuit filed today by two Peruvian indigenous groups and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a U.S.-based conservation organization. The suit was filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York City in June.

Used mostly in luxury furniture, nearly all of Peru's mahogany exports are logged illegally, the groups say, and more than 80 percent of the contraband timber ends up in the United States. Unchecked logging in the Amazon threatens native communities, wildlife, and survival of the mahogany species itself. At the current pace, experts predict that mahogany will be commercially extinct within a decade.

“Millions of dollars worth of Peruvian mahogany enters U.S. ports every year in violation of U.S. and international law," said Ari Hershowitz, NRDC's Latin America BioGems project director. "While U.S. border control agencies look the other way, the rainforest and the communities that depend on them to survive are being plundered."

In addition to the Department of Homeland Security, NRDC and two Peruvian groups -- Native Federation of Madre de Dios (FENAMAD) and Racimos de Ungurahui -- sued the Department of Interior Department, the Department of Agriculture, and three U.S. importers: Bozovich Timber Products of Evergreen, Alabama; T. Baird International Corporation of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; and TBM Hardwoods of Hanover, Pennsylvania.

The lawsuit charges that importing the mahogany violates the U.S. Endangered Species Act and a major international treaty, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). It calls for the federal agencies to stop all illegally traded Peruvian mahogany from entering the United States, and for importers to forfeit illegally imported Peruvian mahogany already in the country.

The action follows an effort by NRDC and Defenders of Wildlife to ensure that leading furniture manufacturers, including Stickley, Furniture Brands International, Henkel-Harris and Hekman, do not use Peruvian mahogany in their products.

"Tens of thousands of tons of Peruvian mahogany are imported into the U.S. for luxury dining room tables, household trimmings and automobile dashboards," said Hershowitz. "But Americans have no idea that buying mahogany contributes to the destruction of the rainforest and threatens the people who live there. Until this dire situation in Peru is addressed, we're asking consumers not to buy it."

By eliminating the lucrative market for contraband mahogany, NRDC and its partners hope to spur Peruvian logging industry reform and put an end to illegal logging.

"Illegal loggers are invading the territories of our indigenous brothers, who live in voluntary isolation, to plunder the natural resources in their reserve, putting them at risk from disease and violence," said Victor Kamena Manuaje, vice president of FENAMAD, a coalition of 27 indigenous Peruvian communities. "Our claim is just and supported by the law -- to get respect for our right to life and our territory."

FENAMAD has been fighting for years to stop illegal mahogany logging and other destructive industrial activity in native reserves set aside for isolated peoples. Meanwhile, Racimos de Ungurahui, a national indigenous rights group based in Lima, Peru, has played a key role in lobbying the Peruvian government to set aside territories for indigenous peoples.

NRDC first proposed international protections for mahogany in 1992, and launched a BioGem campaign in 2002 to protect the last remaining stands of mahogany in Peru. (For more information about NRDC's BioGem Initiative, go to www.savebiogems.org.)

NRDC and its two Peruvian partners are being represented by Robert A. Bourque of the prominent national law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, along with NRDC counsel. "The stakes in this case relate not only to the survival of Peruvian mahogany," Bourque said, "but also to the integrity of the Endangered Species Act and international law.”

For more information, please contact Elliott Negin, NRDC, at 202/289-2405.

US-Dutch Cooperation Nets More Than $2 Million In Hazardous Waste Export Prosecution
By Martin Harrell, Associate Regional Counsel for Criminal Enforcement, U.S. EPA, Region III, Philadelphia, Pa.

February 14, 2006, turned out to be a lovely Valentine’s Day for American and Dutch authorities and a dismal one for three defendants when a federal judge in Philadelphia sentenced a 65-year-old surplus chemical broker and two of his small companies to pay more than two million dollars in restitution and fines for criminally storing, transporting and exporting hazardous waste from Pennsylvania to the Netherlands between 1998 and 2001. Most of the money will go to the Dutch government and a Dutch port operator as restitution for costs they incurred in storing 29 sea shipping containers of chemicals in Rotterdam beginning in late 2000 and then disposing of them three years later.

The Valentine’s Day sentencing (hopefully) ended more than seven years of work by American and Dutch regulators and law enforcement authorities to get Joel D. Udell and two affiliated businesses, Pyramid Chemical Sales Co. and Nittany Warehouse LP, to clean up a warehouse overflowing with old and deteriorating chemicals that presented an imminent endangerment to persons living and working in downtown Pottstown, Pa., about 30 miles west of Philadelphia, and to take responsibility for thousands of similarly aged individual packages, drums and bags of chemicals shipped from Pottstown to the Netherlands as part of Udell’s attempt to empty the warehouse.

In addition to the restitution, Udell, who now resides in sunny Boca Raton, Florida, had to move back to Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia to spend six months in home confinement under electronic monitoring and perform 500 hours of community service in Pottstown. He and the two companies must also pay $ 200,000 in criminal fines, and they will be on probation for five years. While the Court rejected the United States’ request for a prison sentence for Udell, it ordered the defendants to jointly and severally pay $1,243.072.65 to the Dutch government, $409,639.97 to Europe Container Terminals BV, and $150,000 to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in restitution.

The charges grew out of the defendants’ operation of a surplus chemical brokerage business that had been in Udell’s family for decades. Beginning in May, 1998, Pottstown authorities attempted to get Udell to repair the Nittany Warehouse located on a main street in downtown and to improve storage of thousands of containers of chemicals, including flammable, corrosive and toxic material stored in deteriorated or broken containers and bags. The warehouse had become, to put it mildly, an indoor dump, complete with leaking roof and inoperable or unrepaired fire sprinklers and alarms. Pottstown ultimately sued Udell and Nittany Warehouse in state court in 1999, and obtained a state court order in April, 2000, but EPA wound up forcing the defendants to perform an emergency clean up at the warehouse from July, 2000 to early 2001. As part of his effort to empty the warehouse, Udell and Pyramid Chemical shipped 29 forty-foot containers of aging chemicals to Rotterdam between July and November of 2000, allegedly as part of a sale to a Nigerian company. The containers wound up staying ed at the Rotterdam port for three years when Dutch authorities discovered that one of the first two containers to arrive was leaking. As more and more containers arrived in the fall of 2000, Udell and Pyramid Chemical failed to take responsibility for them. They also ignored an EPA administrative order issued in 2003 directing them to return the chemicals to the States.

This case could not have been successfully prosecuted except for close and on-going cooperation over several years between American and Dutch authorities. Authorities were in frequent phone and e-mail contact during the investigation and prosecution. In addition, the United States Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia sent two Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) requests to the Dutch government for documents, photographs, sampling results, and other evidence. The first MLAT request also enabled an EPA criminal investigator and a three-person sampling team to travel to Rotterdam in 2002 to photograph, inventory and sample select individual containers of chemicals and to interview Dutch government personnel and citizens with knowledge of the shipments. Dutch authorities led the witness interviews which were documented in reports written in Dutch and then translated into English. Although American personnel took the samples, Dutch regulatory personnel took possession of and then shipped them to EPA’s laboratory in Denver, Colorado. In addition, authorities in Nigeria were contacted by both Dutch and American authorities and provided information about the purported buyer of the chemicals.

The case was investigated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division office in Philadelphia, with assistance from EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center in Denver, Colorado, the Netherlands Ministry of the Environment, and the Borough of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency also assisted in the investigation. The successful result in this case demonstrates what can be achieved when countries work together to achieve environmental protection.

Philippine Fisherman Expose Bribery Scheme

Some commercial fishing boat owners in the region have disclosed names of local government officials who have been receiving money from them in exchange for their unhampered illegal fishing activities, said Visayan Sea Squadron team leader Antonio Oposa in April. Oposa and Bantay Dagat program coordinator Jojo dela Victoria said they already have the lists of these local officials and others who have been acting as protectors of illegal fishing in regional waters in exchange for money.

The two officials in the anti-illegal fishing campaign said they have been waiting for these fishing boat operators to execute affidavits backing their claims against these local politicians. Based on the information so far gathered, Oposa said one of these local officials has been receiving at least P1-million a month from fishing boats' owners to allow them to continue with their illegal activities particularly in the Visayas Sea and offshore some northern towns of Cebu.

Dela Victoria said there are some commercial fishers who continue to engage in illegal activities resulting in the destruction of marine resources in the Visayas Sea. He vowed to go after these illegal fishers, saying, "If they will follow the law, then we have no problem but if they resist and fire at us, I will sink them, period!" Dela Victoria said the Visayan Sea was once called the Alaska of the Philippines for its rich and seemingly inexhaustible marine resources. But recent studies of the University of the Philippines classified the Visayan Sea already an "over-fished" area. The most "over-fished" areas in Cebu are the seas off Bantayan and Madridejos towns, Dela Victoria said, adding that such situation prompted the closure the Visayan Sea to commercial fishing.

The closure of the Visayan Sea meanwhile had gained support from some fishing boat owners, particularly Pabling Olivar who owns a fleet of these vessels. Olivar told The Freeman that, since the campaign started 12 days ago, there has been a noticeable rise in the number of fishes in the area. Olivar said some of his peers have backed the move because they were aware of the substantial benefits such action may bring in the end, aside from the restoration of the sea's beauty. "I know this is a big sacrifice on our part but I am willing to support the move because this is for the benefit of everybody. We have already stopped operations for a month now and we have already seen the effect," Olivar said.

For more information, contact INECE EPC Member, Antonio A. Oposa, Jr.

Greenwatch Helps Enforce Environmental laws in Uganda

Greenwatch, an environmental rights advocacy organization that seeks to promote public participation in the management, use and protection of the environment has since March 2006, built the capacity of police, environment inspectors, district environment officials, magistrates and state attorneys in enforcement of environmental laws. The programme has been made possible by a 3 year grant from the John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation.

Since the enactment of the National Environment Act (NEA) in 1995, other substantive legislation (Acts of Parliament) and a number of subsidiary legislation (regulations, by-laws, ordinances) have been enacted for the sound management, use and protection of the environment and natural resources in Uganda. The institutional framework has been put in place and is functional. However there has been no significant improvement in the state of the environment in Uganda. It is largely agreed that this is because of one factor, lack of or poor enforcement of legislation and the level of voluntary compliance is still very low.

The law provides for a wide range of measures for the management, use and protection of the environment. Some of these are administrative such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) guidelines, some are judicial or quasi judicial such as environmental restoration orders, criminal/ civil proceedings. Emphasis has since 1995, been put mostly on sensitization, public education and on the administrative aspects of compliance. This has had limited success in the area of compliance but largely successful in the aspect of public awareness and sensitization. The country is now ready for the enforcement of environmental law.

It is against such a background that Greenwatch embarked on a programme that focuses on having the established laws enforced. The programme on enforcement of environmental laws is geared at strengthening and enhancing the capacity of the enforcement officers in government including the Police, Inspectors, state attorneys and the judiciary, to enforce environmental laws in Uganda. Under the programme, investigators have so far been trained; these in most cases carry out investigations of all kinds, and also seeks to make them appreciate the technical and evidential difficulties associated with investigation of environment related offences such as collection of evidence. In Uganda the police conduct investigations leading to prosecution and thus, the need to be trained.

Environmental Inspectors and District environment officers have also been trained under the programme. These liaise with NEMA on matters relating to the environment and are mandated to gather and manage information on the environment and the utilization of natural resources in the district as they perform their roles under the National Environment Act; whereas criminal law is enforced by the Police, the prosecutors and the judiciary. State prosecutors from the office of the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) which is part of the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs and not part of the Police, have also been trained.  Because investigators’ and prosecutors’ work compliments one another, it was felt that these two groups are trained together in order to create a clear link between them and for a successful prosecution to take place.

Environmental law provides for three (3) major aspects of enforcement and compliance namely administrative, civil and criminal. As already noted above, a lot has been done administratively. But civil procedure is long, expensive and complicated. Criminal aspects of environmental law have been largely unexplored yet it has the greatest potential of effectively dealing with a wide range of environmental violations especially at grassroots’ level. It has been determined by NEMA, Greenwatch and other civil society organizations that the reason hindering enforcement of environmental law through criminal procedure is lack of capacity.

 Since 2000, Greenwatch has conducted a series of training sessions for lawyers and the judiciary on environmental law, procedure and access to justice which has resulted in a number of civil suits being filed in courts of law for enforcement of environmental law. These have been largely successful as landmark decisions have been granted which are being used in other jurisdictions. . These trainings have been conducted in collaboration with several partners including the Environmental Law Institute and the World Resources Institute (both of Washington D.C), the United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP), the Partnership for Development of Environmental Law and Institutions in Africa (PADELIA) of UNEP, and NEMA

Guidelines on prosecution of environmental crimes have been drafted by NEMA in conjunction with UNEP under PADELIA and it is felt that these guidelines once enacted, will be applied by the enforcement officers, incorporating the enforcement provisions in the National Environment Act and Regulations made there under; the Water Act; the Forestry and Tree Planting Act; the Land Act among others. It is anticipated that the programme will enable environmental standards to be enforced; more empowered gazetted environment inspectors will be able to execute their roles and duties under the National Environment Act; enforcement officers in government will acquire environmental enforcement skills in a through the expertise of the different facilitators.

For more information, contact Irene Ssekyana, National Coordinator, Greenwatch.

Zambia Hands Down Tough Sentence to Ivory Dealer

Zambia's legal system has handed down a stiff sentence of six years hard labor to a Taiwanese national caught with 70kgs (155lbs) of illegal elephant ivory. The harsh sentence was applauded by conservation groups, including IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare – www.ifaw.org), which campaign for the protection of elephants and a total ban on ivory trade.

IFAW wildlife experts have been watching the case, hopeful that a tough sentence would be handed down to send a strong signal to elephant poachers and illegal ivory dealers.

 “Each year thousands of elephants are killed to pad the wallets of black market ivory dealers like Ting Cheng-lung,” said IFAW Director of Wildlife and Habitat Dr. Joth Singh. “We can not allow the future of the elephant species to be determined by those motivated by personal profit – and this week Zambia’s legal system agreed – sentencing Ting to a tough sentence of six years hard labour. We applaud the court’s actions in this case and hope that it dissuades others from trafficking in ivory and killing elephants.”

The news of Ting’s conviction came just a few months after the 5 July 2006 confiscation of 350 African elephant tusks by Taiwan customs officials – representing at least 175 dead elephants; and only weeks from the 2-6 October 2006 meeting of the U.N. Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) Standing Committee, at which the decision may be made to allow for 60 metric tonnes of ivory to be sold internationally.

Although the ivory trade was banned in 1989, underground trafficking of ivory has continued. Incidents of poaching and ivory seizures have increased noticeably since 2002, when CITES proposed to reopen the international ivory trade with the one-off sale of the 60 metric tonnes of stockpiled ivory from Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. 

IFAW believes that any legal sale in ivory creates a smokescreen for illegal trade, and therefore an increase in poaching. IFAW is calling for CITES to revoke the stockpile sale decision and to maintain a total ban on the trade of ivory. To learn more, visit: www.ifaw.org today.

For more information please contact Nikki Kelly at IFAW at 020 7587 6725.

U.N. Says Waste Dumped in Ivory Coast Violated International Agreements
By Pauline Bax, Associated Press. Reprinted from the Environmental News Network

A U.N. expert on Tuesday called the dumping of chemical residue in Ivory Coast a clear violation of international hazardous waste agreements.

Seven people have died from exposure to the waste, the Health Ministry said, and 44,000 people have sought treatment at hospitals since residents began to complain of a smell of rotten eggs a few weeks ago.

The waste was shipped to the port city of Abidjan by a vessel chartered by commodities trader Trafigura Beheer BV and was dumped -- apparently illegally -- across the city.

On Monday, Ivorian authorities arrested two executives with the Dutch company on charges of poisoning and breaking toxic waste laws. Trafigura has said that it acted lawfully and that the Ivorian contractor which dumped the material was certified to process waste.

"It's pure petrochemical waste," said Rudolph Walder, a Swiss hazardous waste expert with the United Nations disaster assessment mission.

He said the material included solids, oily substances and water -- products that could come from a refinery, the petrochemical industry or cleaning of ships.

"It is very clear to me," Walder said, "that (the waste) is a product that violates the Basel Convention," an international accord on trade in potentially hazardous waste.

U.N. experts previously said the waste contained the potentially dangerous chemical hydrogen sulfide, the source of the rotten smell.

Trafigura said the cargo unloaded by the Panama-registered gasoline tanker consisted only of gasoline residue and caustic soda used to clean the tanks, saying tankers are routinely cleaned after unloading. It said it had no explanation of how the waste could contain hydrogen sulfide.

Ali Yeo, a Justice Ministry official, said the two Trafigura executives who were arrested -- both French -- were charged and jailed after going before a judge Monday afternoon.

"The Ivorians are just as angry with their own government as they are with the rich countries," said Venance Konan, an independent analyst and writer for the state-owned newspaper Fraternite Matin. "They blame those in power for dumping the waste and they blame Europe for trying to get rid of it here."

Mounting public anger about the dumping forced the resignation of the government earlier this month. The ministers of transport and environment were replaced when a new 36-member Cabinet was named over the weekend, with most other ministers reappointed to their old posts.

A French waste removal company began a clean-up operation Sunday at the main garbage dump, the worst of the more than 10 dump sites affected in Abidjan. Removing the waste was expected to take two weeks.

Amsterdam orders investigation into ship that brought toxic waste to Ivory Coast
Reprinted from the Associated Press, 20 September 2006

Netherlands Amsterdam's City Council said Wednesday it has ordered an independent investigation into a ship that carried waste blamed for the deaths of seven people in Ivory Coast.

The ship, the Probo Koala, was chartered by a Netherlands-based company, Trafigura Beheer BV, and had unsuccessfully tried to unload the waste in Amsterdam before it finally disposed of it in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

The company says it handed the material — a mix of gasoline and cleaning agents — to what it said was a qualified local company after receiving permits from the government.

The material was dumped — apparently illegally — at more than 10 sites across the city around Aug. 19.

Seven people have died from exposure to the waste, Ivory Coast's Health Ministry said, and thousands have sought treatment at hospitals since residents began to complain of a smell of rotten eggs.

Amsterdam City Council member Marijke Vos said the investigation in the Netherlands would look at whether any Dutch laws were broken and how to prevent it from happening again.

Amsterdam prosecutors have already opened an investigation into the matter.

Vos said the city's investigation would take place with "careful coordination" not to hinder the criminal investigation.