A Tanzanian court has sentenced a notorious elephant poacher to 12 years in prison.
Boniface Matthew Maliango, nicknamed “The Devil”, was accused of killing thousands of elephants by the PAMS Foundation, which finances the government’s fight against poaching, Africanews.com reported.
Maliango was considered East Africa’s biggest ivory trafficker and the leader of a poaching network that supplied Chinese citizen Yang Fenlan known as “Ivory Queen”, who is currently on trial in Tanzania for illegally trafficking 706 elephant tusks between 2000 and 2014.
The PAMS Foundation said the 47-year-old was believed to be at the head of 15 poaching syndicates operating throughout Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia, Mozambique and southern Kenya.
He was sentenced alongside his brothers Lucas Mathayo Malyango and Abdallah Ally Chaoga.
The three were arrested in October 2015 a year-long manhunt while attempting to smuggle 118 tusks worth over $863,000.
In 1989, a ban on international ivory trade was introduced, but governments and NGOs are struggling to end poaching.
More than 1,300 rhinoceroses were killed by poachers across Africa in 2015, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the highest number since 2008. The number of African elephants has also fallen by around 111,000 to 415,000 over the past decade.
Maliango’s crimes were the focus of a Netflix documentary film, The Ivory Game, produced by Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
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