Police smash £500,000 heroin smuggling gang
9:41am Friday 16th May 2008
More than half a million pounds worth of heroin has been seized by Greater Manchester Police as they continue the successful work of Operation Baton.
The final two people responsible for smuggling the drugs from Afghanistan in rugs were sentenced to a total of 22 years in prison at Minshull Street Crown Court yesterday.
The heroin was contained in thin plastic tubes, which had individually been sewn into the weave of the carpet across the width of each rug.
Jhangheer Younas Ali, aged 29, of Waterloo Street, Glodwick, and Mohsin Khan, aged 30, of Sharpe Street, Collyhurst pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import class A drugs on January 21.
Khan also pleaded guilty to dangerous driving.
Ali has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and Khan has been sentenced to a total of 12 years - 11 years for the drugs offences and one year for the driving offences, both sentences are to run consecutively.
Naela Khalid, aged 27, of Alston Gardens, Burnage was found guilty of conspiracy to import class A drugs following a five day trial. She was sentenced on March 10, to six and half years imprisonment.
On April 19 last year, a package from Afghanistan, addressed to Montcliffe Crescent, Whalley Range, was examined by customs at East Midlands Airport and revealed three rugs containing heroin within the weave of each one.
Greater Manchester Police was informed and the package was taken to the forensic science laboratory, where the long and painstaking process of recovering the drugs was undertaken.
The rugs contained about 5.5 kilos of heroin, with a street value of £500,000.
On April 23, an attempt to deliver the package without the drugs was made to the address in Whalley Range. The occupier of the house refused to accept the parcel though, stating they were not the person named on the package and they were not expecting a parcel.
Attempts were then made to contact the phone number on the package but the call was not answered. A short time later a man called the courier stating he was the owner of the phone and he asked for the package to be redelivered to the address.
On April 24, the parcel was once again delivered to an address on Montcliffe Crescent, but the courier was intercepted outside the house by Khalid who directed him to a different address on the same road.
Khalid then took the parcel back to her house in Burnage.
On April 25, Khan and Ali were seen to go into Khalid's house with her, and they attempted to open the package.
The three of them left the house a short time later and Khalid drove off in a silver Rover, while Ali and Khan drove off in a red Honda.
Officers followed the Honda and after a 20 minute high speed pursuit Khan and Ali were arrested after trying to flee the car. Khalid was also arrested after being stopped in the Rover.
All the offenders' addresses were searched by officers. The search of Khalid's address revealed that attempts had been made to open the parcel and documents linking Khalid to the original address the parcel was sent to were also recovered.
A number of cars and mobile phones were recovered and forensic examination revealed that the phones had been used to contact the courier to arrange delivery of the parcel.
Detective Inspector John Ogdon from GMPs drugs unit said: "Yet again this investigation has shown us the extreme lengths people will go to and the amount of effort they will put into smuggling drugs into this country. Each plastic tube was sewn into each individual weave of the rug and the painstaking process of removing them would have taken one person a number of weeks.
"Once again I am satisfied that we have disrupted a huge drugs operation in Oldham and prevented dangerous drugs from reaching the streets.
"I would like to take this opportunity to re-iterate to the public how vital their help and support is and reassure them that we will work to act on any information they can give us to bring dangerous criminals to justice."