Father and son the £1m drugs Mr Bigs

Taxi drivers in on the deal, court told

A FATHER and son from Oldham were the masterminds behind a huge drugs supply operation worth well over a million pounds, a court has been told.

Fazal and Faisal Hussain, were at the top of the business, but were careful to distance themselves from those actually handling the products in which they were dealing, by organising payment and collection through a network of agents and couriers.

Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court was told the pair conducted their criminal business largely by mobile phone, using untraceable pay-as-you-go phones which they frequently changed.

Their empire crumbled and collapsed however, after a lengthy police investigation dubbed Operation Liffey, in which undercover officers secretly videoed members of the gang — three of them Oldham taxi drivers — in action.

Fazal Hussain and his son Faisal have already entered guilty pleas to conspiracy to supply drugs including heroin and cocaine, as have two other men.

The remaining six — five men and one woman — deny their involvement in the drugs business.

David Pickup prosecuting, told a jury at the start of the hearing which is likely to last at least six weeks, “The prosecution case is that the father and son were engaged in the acquisition and wholesale supply of controlled drugs.

“They stood ready to supply any kind of controlled drug, and worked closely together.”

He said on each occasion they conspired together with others to supply drugs, and painstaking analysis of mobile phone traffic would prove that the six in the dock had been involved.

Drugs seized by police officers from members of the gang as a result of Operation Liffey would have had a value of more than £1million if cut down and sold on the streets, said Mr Pickup.

The court was told that 32-year old Oldham private hire driver Ali Shan had been contracted by the Hussains through a middle man, to collect a 1kg bag of cocaine from an address in Whalley Range, on June 17 ,2009.

He was filmed making the pick up and walking off nonchalantly swinging a plastic carrier bag.

Police tailed his Vauxhall Vectra car and he was stopped on the A62 in Oldham half an hour later.

The court was told the bag had contained a block of tightly compressed heroin of 60 per cent purity with a face value of around £51,000.

If diluted to just five per cent and sold in small wraps however, it could have netted almost £600,000.

In June and July of 2009 the Hussains negotiated the purchase of a large quantity of heroin from suppliers in Bristol.

Oldham private hire driver Afraq Ahmed (31) was asked to travel to the city to help set up the deal.

He made an initial trip on June 13 say the Crown, then travelled down south again on July 13, with 21-year old Mehreen Khalid, another involved in the business, and a former girl friend of Fazal Hussain.

The trip was aborted before the pair arrived, but they made the journey again the following day, when a meeting took place.

Two days later, another driver and passenger made the same trip, and collected a 2kg bag of heroin.

Ali Shan, of Gainsborough Avenue, Oldham, pleads not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to supply a Class A drug, as does Afraq Ahmed, of Grendon Avenue, Oldham, Mehreen Khalid, of Bredbury, Michael West (21), of Greenacres, and Yasir Mahmood (25), of Brompton Street, Oldham.

Habib Rehman (36), of Slough, pleads not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to supply cannabis.

(Proceeding)