Thread by @MetroUK

Descendants of hippos once owned by Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar should be legally recognized as people, or ‘interested persons,’ with legal rights in the US, a judge has ruled.

trib.al/hzdXGPM

The @ALDF filed a lawsuit against the Colombian government on behalf of the hippopotamuses living in Magdalena River in order to save them from being killed.

They called the ruling a ‘critical milestone’ in the broader fight to ‘recognize that animals have enforceable rights.’

Attorneys asked the US district court in Cincinnati to give ‘interested persons’ status to the hippos so that two wildlife experts in sterilization from Ohio could be deposed in the case – a request that has now been granted.

However legal experts in the US say the order won’t carry any weight in Colombia, where the hippos live. Officials there have started sterilizing some of the animals.

‘The ruling has no impact in Colombia because they only have an impact within their own territories.'

'It will be the Colombian authorities who decide what to do with the hippos and not the American ones,’ Camilo Burbano Cifuentes, a criminal law professor at the Universidad Externado de Colombia said.

The ‘cocaine hippos’ are the descendants of animals Escobar illegally imported to his Colombian ranch in the 1980s when he reigned over the country’s drug trade. After Escobar was fatally shot in 1993, the hippos were left at the abandoned estate.

The population of hippos has grown significantly over the past eight years, from 35 to somewhere between 65 and 80 hippos.

The breed has been able to flourish in the area where they have no natural predators, threatening the region’s biodiversity.

Attorneys for @ALDF argued the case is also significant because advocates can bring lawsuits to protect their interests in Colombia as they are now considered ‘interested persons,’ in the US.

Christopher Berry, the group’s lead attorney, called it a narrow but profound ruling.