14 years in the slammer: Car boot’s drug bounty of £4 million uncovered

14 YEARS: Iftikhar Khan will spend 14 years behind bars

A drug dealer has been jailed for 14 years after police found £4 million worth of Class A drugs in the boot of his car.

Iftikhar Khan, 33, was seen loading items into the vehicle shortly before officers arrested him and discovered 30 kilogrammes of heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine in three holdalls.

Leeds Crown Court heard one package of high purity cocaine was marked with a Burberry logo.

E-mails sent from Khan described the drugs as ‘banging’.

Prosecutor Paul Mitchell told the court on Thusday that officers arrested Khan after he came out of an alleyway on Quarry Street on 20th February this year to load the car.

Mr Mitchell said - in spite of the security - experts were able to gain access to some of the messages sent and received, which indicated the scale of the operation.

“This was a massive commercial level of supply of Class A drugs.”

Drug purchases ranging between £300,000 and £500,000 at a time were discussed.

References were also made to dealing the drug further afield in Liverpool and Manchester.

HORRIFIC STASH: Judge Geoffrey Marson said that Khan was running a ‘vile and wicked’ trade

Khan, of Baring Avenue, Bradford Moor, pleaded guilty to two offences of conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

Derek Duffy, mitigating, said his client did not dispute that he had been involved in a large scale supply of drugs but acted under the direction of others who had told him to move them.

He added: “The best mitigation is that he entered a guilty plea at the first opportunity in court.”

Jailing Khan, Judge Geoffrey Marson QC said there had to be long sentences for “commercial enterprises such as these.”

“Dealing in Class A controlled drugs is a vile and wicked trade. It brings huge profits to those involved and misery and often death to those who are addicted to the drugs. “Day in, day out, this court deals with drug addicts who rob, burgle and steal in order to fund their habit.”

Inside the bags were more than 23 kilogrammes of heroin, five kilogrammes of cocaine and 1.2 kilogrammes of crack cocaine as well as some cutting agent.

A key to a flat on Quarry Street was recovered from him and officers found large quantities of cutting agents commonly mixed with Class A drugs including caffeine and Paracetamol.

A Blackberry mobile was also seized equipped with technology designed to send encrypted e-mails that cannot be viewed by law enforcement agents and so is favoured by organised crime operations.

Drug dealer dealt life sentence

FIRED AT CLOSE RANGE: Masum Ahmed owed his supplier over £30,000 for heroin

26 years for Harehills man who shot his supplier at close range

A drug dealer has been jailed for at least 26 years after murdering his drug supplier in cold blood as he sat waiting in his car.

Masum Ahmed, 20, lured Shuel Ali Hussain to Pasture Road, Harehills, and shot him at close range with a semi-automatic gun.

In order to prevent police linking him to the killing, Ahmed then pocketed Mr Hussain’s mobile phones.

Mr Hussain managed to reach a nearby shop from his car but died at the scene from his injuries before emergency services arrived.

Leeds Crown Court heard Ahmed was a successful drug dealer in his own right and earned up to £1,700 week from the drugs supplied to him by Mr Hussain.

Ahmed owed Mr Hussain over £30,000 for over a kilo of heroin and this may have been the motive for the murder.

Detective Inspector Richard Holmes, of West Yorkshire Police Homicide and Major Enquiry Team, said: “Shuel Ali Hussain’s murder was a completely unnecessary act of violence that shows the appallingly tragic consequences that can result when people are prepared to carry and use firearms.

“His murder was the subject of a comprehensive investigation which quickly led to the arrest of those involved, both in the murder itself and in attempts to cover up.

“Mr Hussain’s family have been left devastated at his sudden and violent death at such a relatively young age. We hope they will take some degree of comfort from knowing that the people involved have now had to face the consequences of their actions.

“This case clearly illustrates the human cost of the criminal use of firearms in our communities. West Yorkshire Police will continue to use all available tactics to proactively target those criminals who present this most serious of risks.”

Drug Bust

A British woman has been handed a life imprisonment by a court in Pakistan for attempting to smuggle 63kg of heroin out of the country.

26-year-old Khadija Shah, from Birmingham, was arrested in May 2012 after the drugs were found in her luggage when she was about to board a plane from Islamabad airport.

PRISON: Khadija Shah, pictured with her 16-month-old daughter, Malaika, claims she didn’t know there were any drugs in her luggage

Pregnant at the time, Shah, who also has two other children, aged four and five, will remain in the country’s prison with her youngest child, Malaika, who was born whilst she was in custody.

Malaika, now 16-months-old, will continue to grow up in the prison as she has done for all her life and her mother said if it wasn’t for her, she would have gone crazy.

Speaking to Vice, she said: “If Malaika was not here, I would be crazy because things are very hard… she keeps me strong.”

“I am still breastfeeding…every three months Prisoners Abroad give me some money for basic food items and Pampers for the baby, who I keep clean.

“She likes to play with empty wrappers of food items. I usually try to keep our surroundings clean, too.”

The mother claims she had no idea what was inside the luggage and had been used by a third party with the drugs hidden in her suitcase, not to her knowledge.

She claimed a man, named in court as Imran Khan, brought her, and her two children at the time, to the country and spoilt them with all expenses paid to gain her trust.

On return to the UK, Khan reportedly gave Shah two suitcases, claiming they were for a friend’s daughter who was getting married.

Not-for-profit organisation, Reprieve, has called on the British government to help Khadija to appeal against her sentence.

Maya Foa, director of Reprieve's Death Penalty team, said: “This is a terrible outcome for Khadija and her baby Malaika. As happens in hundreds of cases, she was used as a drugs mule without her knowledge, and yet is facing life in a Pakistani prison.

“The UK government must ensure that Khadija gets the urgent assistance she needs to appeal her sentence so that her baby doesn't grow up behind bars.”

The mother and daughter are currently being held in Adiala jail, in Rawalpindi, where some of Pakistan’s most notorious terrorists are based.