Plea Deal Entered In Charges of Importation of Monkey Parts

Yesterday's Staten Island (NY) Advance reports that a plea deal in federal court in New York brings to a conclusion the 3-year old case against Liberian native Mamie Manneh who had been charged with importing parts of endangered African primates without the permit required by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and failing to disclose to border officials the true nature of the product she was importing. In a decision last year, the court rejected Manneh's free exercise defense to the charges, concluding that her religious claims were not sincere. (See prior posting.) On Tuesday, Manneh pled guilty to smuggling illegal monkey parts ("bushmeat") into the U.S. Manneh has been on parole since last October in an unrelated case in which she was convicted of running over her husband's girlfriend in a parking lot.