Steve Marsden, a Briton who in January was jailed for 25 years for conspiring to import ecstasy was acquitted on appeal today and is to be freed from prison.

Marsden, who was also fined €60,000, had insisted when he filed his appeal that there was no evidence at all which could support a conviction according to law.

He had been jailed after jurors found him guilty by eight votes to one of conspiring to import 50,000 ecstasy pills in the summer of 2006.

The pills were allegedly hidden in the panels of his Mitsubishi Pajero when he was stopped by police as he was driving off the catamaran on July, 9, the night of the World Cup.

He was originally charged with importing and trafficking in ecstasy but two months into the compilation of evidence, court expert pharmacist Mario Mifsud testified that the pills were not ecstasy but contained a chemical known as mCPP.

Mr Marsden's defence lawyer Joe Brincat argued that the pills contained mCPP which was not illegal at the time, however the chemical gives similar effects to MDMA.

The Criminal Court of Appeal said that Mr Marsden had been been wrongly convicted and the prosecution did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that one or more of the co-conspirators had 'illegal' ecstasy in mind as the time of the agreement with Mr Marsen.