The American lawyer seeking human rights for chimpanzees

Tommy, 26, lives on a trailer lot in Gloversville, New York, with only a television for company. Tommy is a chimpanzee, and if the organisation seeking to free him and move him to a sanctuary wins a lawsuit it filed today, the result could have implications for how we view – and treat – our closest animal relatives. Tommy is one of four chimps the Nonhuman Rights Project will be representing. Kiko, also thought to be 26, lives in Niagara Falls, and has been trained in martial arts, though his sparring partner Charlie, "the karate Chimp", is now dead. The other two, Hercules and Leo, are "being held" at a university, where they are used for biomechanical research.

The Nonhuman Rights Project was set up by a legal scholar, Steven M Wise, in 2007, with the aim of conferring "personhood" on animal species. The organisation has filed a writ of habeus corpus, historically used to seek freedom from unlawful detention – if one is human. When I speak to him, Wise is on his way to court to file another case on behalf of his chimpanzee plaintiff. "In March we decided to file suit in New York on behalf of two chimpanzees," he says. "The following month I went to check on them and one of them had died. We went back at the end of September and learned that the second chimpanzee had died. At that point we became concerned and decided that we would file lawsuits on behalf of all the surviving chimpanzees in the state of New York that we can identify. Since then, a third chimpanzee has died."

(2013-12-04/theguardian)