Fast and furious: Officer recalls car chase to nab rhino horn smugglers

Wildlife and National Park Department (Perhilitan) officer Muhamad Azlan Md Saleh was on duty at KLIA on Sept 9, 2021, when he received information about a truck outside the cargo complex.

What ensued appeared to be similar to a scene from the movie “Fast and Furious”. The officer recalled those tense moments during the trial at the Sepang Sessions Court last week.

Azlan said the speeding truck narrowly missed crashing into his colleague, following which the officers pursued the vehicle for about 12km before intercepting it at a roundabout.

Checks found 50 rhino horns in the truck, leading to the arrest of the driver and co-driver. The case attracted widespread attention as it was the first rhino horn smuggling incident to be heard in a Malaysian court.

Azlan told the court that his colleague, Sharif Mohammad Sabali, had asked him to go to the cargo complex to check on a suspicious truck.

Together with Sharif and another officer, they waited outside Gate 4 for the truck to arrive.

“We went to Gate 4 because this is the exit route for transport trucks. When we saw the truck approaching, we moved towards the truck to stop it. However, the truck didn’t stop and accelerated,” he said, adding that it almost knocked down his colleague Khirul Anuar Saaidun. 

Following this, the officers, with Azlan at the wheel, chased the truck in their department’s Toyota Hilux four-wheel drive.

However, he said the driver ignored orders to stop and continued speeding.

“I then managed to corner the truck, forcing it to stop at the roundabout outside the KLIA mosque, where it pulled over to the left side,” he said, demonstrating what transpired with toy vehicles.

The officers found 49 white rhinoceros (square-lipped rhinoceros, Ceratotherium simum) horns and one unit of black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) horn. 

Black rhinoceros are critically endangered animals from African countries, while white rhinoceros are near-threatened animals.

The pair in the truck, Mohamad Sukry Wahab and Muhammad Hafiszan Naser, were slapped with two charges under the Wildlife Conservation Act 2010. They face a maximum fine of RM100,000 and a jail term of not more than three years for each of the charges.

When defence lawyer Aqeeb Rizalman Nordin Zamery cross-examined Azlan, the former suggested that the driver was not aware that it was Perhilitan officers ordering him to stop as their vehicle was not equipped with sirens.

He added that since it was nighttime, the accused did not notice that the vehicle belonged to the department and, therefore, could not ascertain their intention.

Another defence lawyer, Abdul Aziz Hamzah, questioned why the officers did not set up a roadblock to stop the truck.

Aziz: You can request assistance from the department, right? If you wanted to stop them, you could block (them), don’t need to wait. You can block, correct?

Azlan: Correct.

Aziz: Correct, but you didn’t do that. You walked for 3m (to the exit of Gate 4) to stop them. During that time, you did not have cones and confistication jackets, correct?

Azlan: Correct. 

The prosecution was led by deputy public prosecutor Wan Nur Muhammad Ehsan Alauddin as well as Perhilitan’s prosecution officers, Suhainariddah Abd Rashid and Nazarudin Kamarudin.

The case will resume from Sept 16 to Dec 18 in the Sepang Sessions Court before judge Ahmad Fuad Othman.

NGO Traffic in Southeast Asia previously said the incident was one of the largest rhino horn seizures in Malaysia.

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