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.

£6m heroin haul hidden in furniture

BEHIND BARS: Hafiz Akhtar was sentenced to 15 years in prison

Tables have turned for drug smuggling group

A £6 million haul of class-A drugs, found hidden in furniture in Liverpool, has landed three would-be drug smugglers lengthy prison sentences this week.

Hafiz Akhtar, Mohammed Naeim Yaqub and Abdul Wahid were jailed for a combined total of more than 33 years after a huge shipment of heroin was discovered back in 2012.

Border Force officials made the find when searching a shipping container from Pakistan at the Royal Seaforth Docks in Liverpool.

The container appeared to be stocked with furniture, yet after further inspection, 8kg of heroin was found concealed in boxes.

It was being delivered to a storage unit at Hendon Mill in Nelson, Lancashire, on 14th May 2012, where a search of the premises, alongside another in Leeds, recovered a further 20.5kg of heroin.

Akhtar, 35, of Leeds Road, Dewsbury, was found guilty of conspiring to supply heroin after driving a hired van filled with some of the furniture to a storage unit in Leeds.

He was handed the longest sentence of 15 years at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court.

Yaqub, 34, and Wahid, 37, both from Nelson, Lancashire, were also jailed for 11-and-a-half and seven years respectively.

Tony McMullin, regional director of Border Force North Region, said: “This was an intricate concealment but thanks to the vigilance of our Border Force officers we helped stop these dangerous drugs finding their way to the streets.

“Smugglers will always develop new and elaborate methods to try to get their illegal products into the UK and detections such as this are a real testament to our officers’ expertise.

“Working closely with law enforcement colleagues at the NCA we are determined to prevent drug trafficking and put those responsible behind bars.”

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.

Eggs-tended sentence

A pair of drug dealers from Bradford have been sentenced to a total of ten and a half years in prison after trading Class A drugs hidden in Kinder chocolate eggs.

The two men, 25-year-old Mohammed Khan and Muhammed Islam, 19, appeared in front of Bradford Crown Court on Sunday 16th February where they were sentenced.

GUILTY: Mohammed Khan (four and a half years) and Muhammed Islam (six years) were sentenced at Bradford Crown Court last week

Khan, a student from West Bowling, Bradford, was a key figure in the managerial process of the operation whilst his crime partner, Islam, also of West Bowling, sold the drugs on to street dealers.

The pair pleaded guilty to two offences of possession with intent to supply the Class A drugs, heroin and cocaine.

GUILTY: Mohammed Khan (four and a half years) and Muhammed Islam (six years) were sentenced at Bradford Crown Court last week

The drugs had been dealt through the novelty eggs, from inside Kinder chocolate. When police searched the men’s homes in March last year, drugs concealed in the plastic containers were found alongside weighing scales, and mobile phones which included evidence of texts and phone calls, highlighting how the process would work.

Prosecuting, Mr Richard Davies, said that Khan was an intelligent man who had been roped into the project to work the phones and Islam would work out on the streets supplying the drugs directly.

Khan’s barrister, Nigel Hamilton, said he studied avionics at Leeds University and got involved in the drugs trade after crashing a car and not being able to pay off the £1,500 repair bill. He added that Khan’s family had been threatened and the arrest came as a ‘relief’ to the 25-year-old.

Nick Worsley, representing Islam, said he worked with young people in the West Bowling area and helped with sports initiatives, and had been recruited to the drugs trade to clear a debt.

The Recorder of Bradford, Judge Roger Thomas QC, said both defendants ‘willingly, enthusiastically and professionally’ supplied drugs.

The pair were arrested under Operation Stalebank, which was launched by West Yorkshire Police last year aiming to rid street dealers in the West Bowling, Manningham and Manchester Road areas.

Scandalous !

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) steward has been charged following the seizure of approximately two and a half kilograms of heroin at Leeds Bradford International Airport. 

Syed Shahrukh Shah, 31, from Pakistan, appeared at the Leeds Magistrate’s Court on Thursday 22^nd November charged with the importation of a Class-A drug.

Shah did not enter a plea and has been remanded in custody until his next court appearance at Leeds Crown Court on 5^th December.

The drugs were found inside the baggage that belongs to Shah, and arrived on a flight from Islamabad, Pakistan on Wednesday night.

Following the seizure by Border Force, the investigation and prosecution are being carried out by the National Crime Agency.

Kevin Parsons, acting assistant director for Border Force, said: “This is an excellent seizure of an extremely harmful drug and I would like to pay tribute to the vigilance and hard work of the officers involved. We will continue to work hard to keep our borders safe and crack down on drug smuggling.”

Pakistan International Airlines

PIA DRUGS SCANDAL

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) steward has been charged following the seizure of approximately two and a half kilograms of heroin at Leeds Bradford International Airport.

Syed Shahrukh Shah, 31, from Pakistan, appeared at the Leeds Magistrate’s Court on Thursday 22nd November charged with the importation of a Class-A drug.

Shah did not enter a plea and has been remanded in custody until his next court appearance at Leeds Crown Court on 5th December.

The drugs were found inside the baggage that belongs to Shah, and arrived on a flight from Islamabad, Pakistan on Wednesday night.

Following the seizure by Border Force, the investigation and prosecution are being carried out by the National Crime Agency.

Kevin Parsons, acting assistant director for Border Force, said: “This is an excellent seizure of an extremely harmful drug and I would like to pay tribute to the vigilance and hard work of the officers involved. We will continue to work hard to keep our borders safe and crack down on drug smuggling.”

This latest news follows hot on the heels of the sentencing of experienced PIA pilot, Irfan Faiz, 55, who was arrested for being drunk as he prepared to fly a plane.

Faiz, father-of-two, was more than three times over the alcohol limit, as he was about to fly an Airbus with 156 people on board to Pakistan from Leeds Bradford Airport on 18th September.

He was about to pilot the Pakistan International Airlines 776 flight to Islamabad, when he was asked to leave the cockpit due to concerns raised by security staff.

Faiz gave an initial reading of 41 microgrammes in 100 millilitres of breath on the police officer's hand-held device. The legal limit for driving a car is 35 microgrammes but for flying in the UK it’s just nine, the court heard.

He later gave a reading on the evidential machine of 28.

Faiz's barrister, Paul Greaney QC, told the court his client was not a heavy drinker but was under a lot of stress at the time because of a kidnap threat against his family back home.

Mr Greaney also told the judge that, despite being an experienced pilot, Faiz was not aware of the drink-fly rules in the UK and that the rules in Pakistan are that there must be a 12-hour gap between ''bottle and throttle''.

Mr Justice Coulson at Leeds Crown Court said he was ''astonished'' to hear that pilots regularly flying out of the UK were not aware of the rules in this country, which are based on the amount of alcohol present in the body.

The court heard that Faiz was an experienced and wellrespected pilot with 25 years' experience and an unblemished record. He has been sentenced to nine months imprisonment Solicitor Abdul Iftikhar, of Kamrans Solicitors, who are representing Faiz has confirmed to the Asian Express that they’ll be lodging an appeal against the sentence of nine months imprisonment.

Mr Iftikhar said: “The basis of the appeal is that it is manifestly excessive in all the circumstances of his case and that the Court of Appeal will be requested to deal with Captain Faiz’s case on an expedited basis.”

A source at the UK’s National Crime Agency told reporters that the agency was concerned about the rise in the numbers of PIA staff involved in the smuggling of Class-A drugs into the UK.