Argentine court rules 'captive' orangutan has basic rights

A court in Argentina has granted legal rights enjoyed by humans to an orangutan who has spent the last 20 years captive in a zoo.

Lawyers had appealed to free Sandra from the Buenos Aires zoo by arguing that although not human, she should be given legal rights and had even argued that she was being illegally detained, the BBC reported.

If there is no appeal, the ape will be transferred to a sanctuary in Brazil where she will enjoy greater freedom.

Lawyers for Argentina's Association of Professional Lawyers for Animal Rights (Afada) said Sandra was "a person" in the philosophical, not biological, sense and was in a situation of illegal deprivation of freedom as a "non-human person".

They had also filed a "habeas corpus" writ in her favour last November over "the unjustified confinement of an animal with probable cognitive capability", which the judges had rejected several times before deciding finally that Sandra could be considered to have rights to freedom which needed defending.