HUNTING -- International news outlets are reporting that Zimbabwe will not charge American dentist Walter Palmer for killing a tourist-attraction prized lion in July because he had obtained legal authority to conduct the hunt, according to a cabinet minister today.

Charges are still pending against the professional hunter who facilitated the hunt.

Palmer, a lifelong big-game hunter from Minnesota, stoked a global controversy when he used a bow and arrow to kill Cecil, a rare black-maned lion, outside Hwange National Park in Western Zimbabwe.

But Palmer's hunting papers were in order, Environment Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri said on Monday. Consequently, he could not be charged, according to a Reuters report.

The environment minister had previously called for Mr Palmer to be extradited and face prosecution. However, it appears that Mr Palmer broke no laws when he killed the lion.

"We approached the police and then the Prosecutor General, and it turned out that Palmer came to Zimbabwe because all the papers were in order," Muchinguri-Kashiri told reporters.

Muchinguri Kashiri said Palmer was free to visit Zimbabwe as a tourist but not as a hunter. The implication was he would not be issued the permits a hunter needs.

When he first spoke publically about the incident during an interview in early September, Palmer told the Associated Press and Minneapolis Star Tribune that if he had known who the animal was he would not have killed it.

The incident set of an international storm of protest against trophy hunting.

Two more people still face charges related to Cecil's killing. Both allegedly were involved in using bait to lure Cecil out of his habitat in Hwange National Park so he could be killed.

Theo Bronkhorst, a professional hunter in Zimbabwe, is charged with breaching hunting rules in connection with the hunt in which Cecil was killed. A game park owner is also charged with allowing an illegal hunt. Both have denied the charges.

Bronkhorst is expected to appear in a Hwange court on Thursday where a magistrate will rule on a request by his lawyers that his indictment be quashed.

Palmer, 55, has previously said that the hunt was legal and no one in the hunting party realized the targeted lion was Cecil, a well-known tourist attraction in the park.

Palmer could not be reached immediately for comment on the environment minister's statement to reporters. (Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe, additional reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by James Macharia)