[meteorite-list] Meteorite Man Arrested Again (Gibeon Meteorite)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:13 2004
Message-ID: <200208131620.JAA16436_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.namibian.com.na/2002/august/news/027A5E63D9.html

'Meteorite man' arrested again
WERNER MENGES
The Namibian
August 13, 2002

A WINDHOEK resident who was arrested last year after a stolen
meteorite was allegedly found in his possession is back in Police
custody, again on charges related to the rare and sought after space
objects.

Members of the Police's Protected Resources Unit arrested Walter
Horst (58) on Friday, after a crate he was trying to send to
Johannesburg was opened at a courier company's premises and found to
contain four meteorites.

Namibian meteorites are protected by law, and may not be removed
from where they are found or taken out of the country without a
permit.

A lucrative trade appears to be flourishing in these rare objects
which rained out of space - there are numerous web sites which offer
Namibian meteorites for sale.

Dr Gabi Schneider, Director of the Geological Survey and Vice
Chairperson of the Monuments Council of Namibia, said yesterday that
while the illegal export and trade in Namibia's meteorites had
become a major problem in the past 10 years, the extent of the
damage to Namibia's natural heritage remained difficult to assess.

However, a survey of the numerous web sites on the internet where
Namibian meteorites are offered for sale indicates that a large
number have already been taken out of the country, she said.

Namibia is home to the world's largest meteorite - at Hoba near
Grootfontein, and is also the site of the largest meteorite shower,
which came down in the Gibeon area thousands of years ago.

Schneider said it appears from the thefts of meteorites in recent
years that meteorite smugglers have been adapting their tactics,
possibly because the objects are no longer so easily found in the
areas where they landed.

Two meteorites were stolen from the Geological Survey's museum in
Windhoek at the end of last year, another vanished from there a year
earlier, one was stolen from the Post Street Mall meteorite display
in Windhoek last year, and before that one was stolen from the
Monuments Council.

The communities in whose home areas the meteorites are found are the
major losers in the illegal trade, said Schneider.

While foreign meteorite dealers ask - and readily receive -
astronomical prices for Namibian meteorites, most of which come from
the Gibeon area, communities for the most part earn a pittance from
selling the meteorites to dealers and their middlemen, she said.

On the sites offering Gibeon meteorites, the prices vary from US$1
per gram for small objects, to some US$1 400 (N$14 500) for a
seven-and-a-half kilogram object.

Another web site advertises a Gibeon meteorite of some 2,5 kg for
sale for US$975 (about N$10 000), while yet another states that
Gibeon meteorites, weighing some 103 kg and 105 kg, had been sold
for US$50 000 and US$75 000 respectively.

The meteorites which Horst allegedly tried to send out of the
country weighed 181 kg.

Horst had been free on N$10 000 bail on two other charges - one of
illegally possessing a rhino horn, and one of receiving stolen goods
in the form of another meteorite weighing some 296 kg - when he was
arrested last week.

He was held on those charges in September last year, after the
meteorite stolen from a display in Post Street Mall in the capital
allegedly found its way into his hands.

Horst appeared before Magistrate Sarel Jacobs in the Windhoek
Magistrate's Court yesterday on a charge of the illegal removal and
export of meteorites.

He was told that he is to remain in custody. His defence lawyer,
Kobus Potgieter, told the court that a formal bail application will
be brought on Thursday.
Received on Tue 13 Aug 2002 12:19:54 PM PDT