Multi-million drugs gang found guilty

COURT CORRESPONDENT
Three taxi drivers among network masterminded by father and son

FIVE MEN — three of them private hire drivers — who were involved in a multi-million pound drugs supply business masterminded by a father and son from Oldham, have been found guilty of conspiracy to supply.


The unanimous verdicts were delivered by a jury of eight men and four women, after a hugely expensive trial lasting almost eight weeks at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court.

The men were all part of a network of agents, couriers and drivers.

The “Godfather” behind the criminal business, 43-year old Fazal Hussain, and his 20-year old son Faisal, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs before the trial began, along with two other men involved.

The jury heard that their drugs empire collapsed after a lengthy Greater Manchester Police operation dubbed Operation Liffey in which undercover officers kept members of the gang under covert surveillance, videoing their movements, including taxi trips to Birmingham and Bristol.

David Pickup, prosecuting, said drugs seized by police working on the operation, would have had a value of more than £1 million, if cut down, and sold on the streets.

The jury had been told that the Hussains, of Cranbrook Street, Oldham, were careful to distance themselves from their agents, conducting their business by mobile phone, using untraceable pay-as-you-go handsets which they frequently changed.

Mr Pickup said: “The father and son were engaged in the acquisition and wholesale supply of controlled drugs.”

He said that a painstaking analysis of mobile phone traffic between cell-phones seized by the police proved their involvement.

Ali Shan (32), of Gainsborough Avenue, had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to supply, as did Afraq Ahmed (31), of Grendon Avenue, Michael West (21), of Hollins Street, Yasir Mahmood (25), of Brompton Street and Mehreen Khalid (21), of Bredbury, .

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

Mehreen Khalid was the only one of the six on trial to be cleared by the jury on a majority verdict.

Shan, who worked for Royton Cars, was videoed by police as he collected a package containing more than half a million pounds worth of cocaine from an address in Whalley Range in 2009.

He was then tailed across the city as he headed back to Oldham to make a pre-arranged delivery to a middle-man.

He claimed in court: “Someone took advantage of me because I am a simple person. I’m not clever, and perhaps a bit naive.”

Afraq Ahmed, another Oldham private hire driver, made three trips to Bristol on behalf of the Hussains, little knowing his every move was being watched and filmed by police.

Ahmed, who worked for Village Cars, made two of the trips with Mehreen Khalid, said to have been a former girl friend of Fazal Hussain, but claimed he knew nothing about the reason for the journeys, and saying £220 per return trip had been too good to pass up.

Michael West was caught red-handed in a taxi with a bag containing more than half a million pounds of heroin between his legs. He denied knowing anything about the drugs and said he had been “used.”

The jury was told Yasir Mahmood had been a middleman who had been involved in arranging for the collection of drugs from dealers in Birmingham.

The five men, along with the Hussains and two other men who pleaded guilty to their involvement in the business, will be sentenced later this month.