– A legal hunt? –
He later apologised for killing Cecil, a 13-year-old male renowned for his distinctive black mane.
Palmer said he believed it was a legal hunt and appeared to blame Bronkhorst for misleading him.
Muchinguri said Honest Ndlovu, the local landowner, did not have a hunting quota for a lion but that the rural district council covering the land did have one.
Bronkhorst has been charged with “failing to prevent an illegal hunt” and is due back in court on Thursday when the judge is due to decide on his application to have the case against him thrown out.
Bronkhorst has always denied any wrongdoing, saying he had obtained all the permits required to kill an elderly lion that was outside the national park boundaries.
When Palmer returned to work in September, a handful of protesters stood outside his dentist practice holding signs declaring “Stop Trophy Hunting” and “Animals Not Trophies.”
Palmer, 55, said the ordeal had affected his wife and daughter, who had been threatened on social media.
“I don’t understand that level of humanity to come after people not involved at all,” he said in an interview.
Images of the dentist grinning over dead prey from previous hunts – a limp leopard, a rhino, an elk, a big horned sheep, a cape buffalo -circulated widely on the Internet, feeding the firestorm of anger.
Radical US animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) even called for Palmer to be hanged, and animal activist Brigitte Bardot described him as a “serial killer”.
Bronkhorst, who was granted $1,000 bail in the Cecil case, was also arrested in September on separate charges of planning to smuggle 29 sable antelopes – a rare and expensive breed – into South Africa.
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