A Mombasa court has overturned a 20?year jail term handed to an ivory trafficking "kingpin", in a case that had been seen as a test of the country's will to take on rampant poaching. Feisal Mohamed Ali was sentenced in 2016 after prosecutors presented him as the head of an organised crime network that spanned African wildlife parks and buyers in Asia, the primary destination for poached ivory.

However, on appeal, Mombasa high court judge Dora Chepkwony rejected the sentence passed by the lower court in July 2016 as "unconstitutional". Ali was arrested in Tanzania in 2014 in connection with two tons of ivory ?228 whole tusks and 74 pieces ? found in a Mombasa warehouse. Authorities put the value of the ivory at 420 million shillings.