Heroin smugglers’ fail in appeal
Date published: 27 October 2008
TWO men involved in a plot to smuggle £1m of heroin into the UK in Afghan rugs deserved every day of their tough sentences, Appeal Court judges have ruled.
Janhangheer Ali, of Waterloo Street, Oldham, and Moshin Khan, of Sharp Street, Manchester, both pleaded guilty at Manchester Crown Court in May to conspiracy to import Class A drugs.
Khan also admitted dangerous driving.
Ali (30), received a 10-year jail term and Khan (30) 12 years. On Friday at London’s Appeal Court both men challenged those sentences as “manifestly excessive”.
Lawyers argued that they had not been given enough credit for their guilty pleas, and the judge had adopted “too high a starting point” for the drugs offence.
Both men had pleaded guilty on the basis that they were mere bit-part players in the plot and did not know who the “Mr Big” was.
But Mr Justice Stadlen rejected the appeals as unarguable.
He said there was nothing that would justify reducing the sentences imposed, given the amount of heroin seized.
The court heard that 4.8kg of the drug were concealed in rugs sent via DHL from Kabul in Afghanistan.
It had purity levels of 71-76 per cent and could have been sold on the street for £1m.
The parcel was intercepted by customs officers at East Midlands airport in April. But it was sent on to its intended address in Manchester and kept under surveillance by police.
