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Tanzania arrests Kenyan suspected of big-scale ivory smuggling
23/12/2014
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania has arrested a Kenyan businessman suspected of trafficking ivory and other big-game trophies, the police said on Tuesday.
Feisal Mohamed Ali, 47, was arrested in Dar es Salaam on Monday on a warrant issued by Interpol which is trying to track down armed gangs that kill elephants for tusks and rhinos for horns to be shipped to Asia for use in ornaments and medicines.
"The businessman is cooperating with the police to establish if he is involved in the alleged criminal activities," Gustav Babile, head of Interpol in Tanzania, told Reuters, adding the investigation was still ongoing.
Police suspect Ali, from Kenya's port city of Mombasa, is behind an international ivory poaching syndicate linked to a 3-tonne haul of elephant tusks seized in Mombasa in June.
Poaching has risen in recent years across Africa. In Tanzania, 10,000 elephants were killed in 2013 alone, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a London-based conservation group.
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