25 June 2023 , 17:51
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Mini the baby marmoset was ripped away from her mother in the wild to live with a YouTuber.
But far from just being a pet, she has been subjected to a life of horrendous cruelty to entertain a sick, dark internet community who take pleasure out of her pain and misery.
She is just one of thousands of monkeys that are tortured for videos being viewed in the UK and US.
Three women in Britain have been arrested for their part in a monkey torture ring that sold videos of macaques being killed across the world.
They are among 20 people under investigation globally for being involved in trading brutal videos of baby long-tailed macaques having body parts amputated and being tortured and decapitated in Indonesia. Footage includes monkeys being killed using blenders and power tools.
Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him
The torture ring, which has been compared to a child sexual abuse gang, began on YouTube and has also spread to Facebook.
But the most extreme footage was traded in private groups on the encrypted Telegram messaging app. Among those arrested was “a 35-year-old woman who loved birds and lived with her parents in the Midlands”.
She was allegedly one of the cruellest contributors to one of the Telegram groups, called Ape’s Cage.
Police in Indonesia have arrested two torture suspects.
“We’ve seen an escalation in this extreme, graphic content, which used to be hidden but is now circulating openly on platforms like Facebook,” said Sarah Kite, co-founder of animal charity Action for Primates.
She called for UK laws to be updated to make it easier to prosecute individuals who pay for torture videos.
“If someone is proactively involved in inflicting that pain by paying for it and providing a list of things they want done to the animal, there should be stronger laws to hold them to account,” she said.
Paul Wolpert, leading the investigation in the US for the Department of Homeland Security, compared the torture rings to child sexual abuse gangs. He warned that anyone involved should “expect a knock on the door at some point”.