Chinese National Arrested Smuggling 2,000+ Ants at Nairobi Airport

A Chinese national was arrested at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi this week after authorities discovered more than 2,000 live queen garden ants concealed in his luggage as he attempted to board a flight to China.

Zhang Kequn, 27, was intercepted during a routine security screening on Tuesday. Immigration officials had placed a stop order on his passport due to prior suspicions. A search of his bags revealed 1,948 ants packed in specialized test tubes and an additional 300 hidden inside three rolls of tissue paper, according to court filings. Prosecutors described the concealment as a deliberate effort to evade detection by X-ray machines and manual checks.

Investigators from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) believe Zhang is connected to an ant-trafficking network dismantled in Kenya last year. He allegedly evaded arrest in a previous smuggling attempt in May by using a different passport to leave the country. In that case, four men, including two Belgians, a Vietnamese national, and a Kenyan, were sentenced to one year in prison or fined 7,700 each for trying to export thousands of the same species, known scientifically as Messor cephalotes, or giant African...