Animal Concerns Research and Education Society of Singapore (Acres) president Louis Ng said a sailor had smuggled the vervet monkey, nicknamed Blue, into the Southeast Asian nation from South Africa and sold him as a pet.

Singapore authorities confiscated Blue last year after the daughter of his owner alerted a US-based animal rights group, which in turn informed Acres.

Ng said Acres worked with the Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority to rescue Blue, who was found chained, kept in a cage and with abrasions around his neck.

"He really didn't like living with the chain around his neck all the time. It was a pretty sad condition," Ng told AFP.

Ng said Blue's new home would be the Munda Wanga Sanctuary in Zambia where he would live in a large enclosure with other vervet monkeys.

Blue's 16-hour journey back to Africa was to be on board two commercial flights, the first on Singapore Airlines to Johannesburg and the second to Lusaka on South African Airways.

Ng said he would not receive any special treatment, travelling in a wooden crate in the cargo holds.

Primates are not allowed to be kept as pets in Singapore, and it is illegal to import them without a license. Offenders caught owning an endangered species face a maximum fine of 5,000 dollars (2,941 US).

The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority said Blue's owner, whom they did not identify, was fined just 200 Singapore dollars.

Ng said Blue was the first pet primate to be repatriated from Singapore, although Acres was working to help return up to six confiscated gibbons to their homes in Thailand and Indonesia.

TERRA.WIRE