The month of April 2015 will be a milestone in the fight for the Rights of Great Apes in the world. For the first time in the judicial history of the United States, it was granted a Habeas Corpus to two chimpanzees who suffered the damage from captivity and torture of an Experience Centre at Stony Brook University, in New York State.

Hercules and Leo are the first two great apes recognized as Non Human Persons in the country, and have the right to be protected by the legal instrument of Habeas Corpus, which exists in human societies.

Judge Barbara Jaffe and the Supreme Court in Manhattan, which granted the release of the primates, are plotting the way forward for all courts of the country, where hundreds of chimpanzees – official and private property – are still kept in biomedical torture centers, without any right to freedom.

NGO Nohuman Rights Project , which started this process, still looks forward to the release of two other chimpanzees, Kiko and Tommy, who had their freedom denied at first instance. But with resources to the Superior Courts, it may have the same outcome that the two chimpanzees now released – who must  be transferred to Save the Chimps Sanctuary, in Florida, where 250 other chimpanzees already live.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian

President, GAP Project International

Read more at http://www.nonhumanrightsproject.org/2015/04/20/judge-recognizes-two-chimpanzees-as-legal-persons-grants-them-writ-of-habeas-corpus/