London's criminal families replaced by ethnic gangs

By Ben Leapman
23/04/2006

The extent of the shift from family crime gangs modelled on the Krays to international networks rooted in ethnic minorities has been uncovered in a police intelligence report.

Scotland Yard has identified 180 crime gangs, speaking 24 languages, who are thought to be responsible for a third of murders in London.

Almost half, 47 per cent, are classed as "cultural networks" whose members are bound by a common language or homeland.

Police have made Turkish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Colombian gangs - whose victims are often from their own communities - their top priority.

By contrast, only nine per cent of the gangs are centred on one family. Most of the rest, 42 per cent, are neighbourhood-based or headed by gangsters who met in jail. The remaining two per cent meet only via the internet, to commit fraud or exchange paedophile images.

Detectives headed by Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur have listed the gang members and their crimes on a document known as The Matrix to try to determine which present the most urgent problem. The Yard hopes to disrupt 100 gangs by next April by means of arrests and prosecutions.

When detectives uncover a gang, they monitor its activities before moving in to raid its premises. The aim is to identify the kingpin and obtain evidence to secure conviction for a major crime.

Gangs tend not to specialise in a particular type of offence, but switch between drug dealing, prostitution, fraud or people-smuggling as opportunities arise. Two thirds of the 180 gangs are involved in Britain's £7 billion-a-year drugs trade, while half operate across borders.

The intelligence document, drafted by Scotland Yard's strategy adviser, Anna Aquilina, and presented to the Metropolitan Police Authority, says: "Changes in technology, travel and the diversity of London's communities are reflected in the growing complexity and presence of criminal networks."

Mr Ghaffur said: "The average Londoner will not be directly affected by criminal network activity, but we must recognise the disproportionate harm that they are causing to some communities."

When the drug lord, Abdullah Baybasin, was convicted in January of plotting to supply class A drugs, police claimed that he and his Kurdish gang, from eastern Turkey, had once controlled 90 per cent of Britain's heroin supply.

Wheelchair bound Baybasin, 45, later pleaded guilty to conspiring to blackmail and pervert the course of justice and awaits sentence. Ten members of his gang were jailed for five to 16 years for kidnap, heroin supply and other offences.

In the 1960s Ronnie and Reggie Kray ruled the east London underworld and were locked in a deadly feud with the Richardson gang from south London. Today's most notorious family gang is the Adams clan, of Camden Town, known as the A-Team.

Thomas Adams was acquitted in 1986 of handling gold from the £26 million Brinks Mat raid while Robert Adams was convicted of leading the failed attempt to steal £250 million of gems from the Millennium Dome in 2000.

Scotland Yard has also warned that professional armed robbers are being replaced by "chaotic" gangs whose raids lack planning.

The new breed of robbers strike on the spur of the moment, avoiding banks for the softer targets of betting shops or late night petrol stations. They are younger, quicker to use violence and spend their hauls on drugs.

New heroin route from East to UK uncovered

In just three months, £10m worth of heroin has been intercepted at British ports. The drugs, sent to 'ghost' companies, came from Bangladesh. Here we reveal the traffickers' new tactics - and how they have used one of the Asian country's most respected businesses to mask their deadly trade

Jamie Doward and Urmee Khan in London, and Mahtab Haider in Dhaka
Sunday April 23, 2006
Observer

Rivington House, Great Eastern Street, London EC1, is an unlikely conduit for an operation to smuggle heroin. A nondescript block of smog-stained concrete, jammed among sandwich bars and graphic design studios, it does little to attract attention from the fashionable crowd in London's Hoxton.

But until recently its grey walls concealed the final staging post for a complex campaign to smuggle heroin from Bangladesh. The country was not previously linked on a large scale with the heroin trade and the operation signalled the widening of a quiet front in the drugs war that has alarmed customs officers. The revelation has prompted officials to ask two questions: how much heroin is now reaching Britain from Bangladesh? And what part has one of its biggest companies unwittingly played in the trade?

Up to last year Rivington House, an office block which is home to scores of legitimate small businesses, was also the headquarters of an obscure company called Ocean Line Foods. Then in April last year the firm disappeared.

There is no record of Ocean Line Foods at Companies House. It has no website and left no forwarding address. The company's former mobile phone number - listed on several UK shipping documents - is one that can be rented from Carphone Warehouse by tourists. It is not even clear whether Ocean Line Foods has ever existed, other than on paper. But the company's name can be found in a confidential intelligence report produced by the Bangladeshi Department of Narcotics Control, obtained by The Observer.

The name of another UK-based company, M/S Bengal Bay, also appears in the report. Located above a coffee shop on the Edgware Road, London, the import/export firm shared a building with a range of legitimate organisations, including the Feng Shui Society, a limousine hire firm and a business called Jesus Watches. Then one day the police came knocking. 'There was all sorts of trouble with the company,' recalled Mina Sim, an office administrator at the company which let space to M/S Bengal Bay. 'The police were here all the time.'

Over the past year a series of ostensibly legitimate firms with links to Bangladesh have joined a bulging group of import/export firms that have attracted the attention of the Met: there is the company that specialises in exotic spices, and the firm that sells granite for kitchens and bathrooms. Worryingly, these are just the ones that customs know about.

The consignment labelled 'foodstuffs' arrived at Southampton port on Valentine's Day last year, where it lay unclaimed. A couple of weeks later, another consignment - also from Bangladesh, but labelled 'beauty products' - turned up at the same port, again with no one to pick it up. X-rays revealed the packages - sent by two Bangladesh-based companies, Emdad Trading and Jamil International - contained a total of 21.5kg (about 47lbs) of heroin with a street value of more than £1m.

Then in May, 41.5kg of heroin were found in a shipment labelled 'floor tiles' which had been dispatched to Southampton by another Bangladesh-based company, Green Heaven Enterprise. Usually customs might expect to seize 10kg in any one haul. Similar-sized quantities turned up in legitimate consignments shipped to Felixstowe. In total, some 140kg of the drug - worth nearly £10m once sold on to Britain's 260,000 heroin addicts - had entered the UK from Bangladesh.

Customs officials were concerned: previously they had not considered Bangladesh to be a major conduit for heroin. The total amount of heroin found in just a handful of seizures in three months doubled that acknowledged by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDC) as passing between the port of Chittagong and the UK in the whole of last year, and suggested the smugglers were changing tactics.

'The seizures made in the UK in 2005 relate to an overall pattern where ethnic/language-based groups are moving product within south Asia by making many, many small runs,' said Gary Lewis, regional representative of the UNDC, based in New Delhi.

'The really interesting thing about the Bangladeshi seizures was that the traffickers had managed to amalgamate a relatively large amount of product for the two shipments to the UK, whereas most runs tend to average only around 5kgs.'

It was clear that the Bangladeshi heroin trade was now an urgent threat, one that had caught the UK authorities off guard. The sophisticated nature of the operation was also alarming. The export companies appeared to have legitimate licences and tax identification numbers which had been issued by the Bangladeshi authorities.

The intended recipients of the consignments - companies such as Ocean Line Foods and M/S Bengal - had recognised postal addresses in the UK. Seemingly out of nowhere, a well-resourced and extensive drug-smuggling operation had sprung up on the back of a legitimate trading network.

Amid growing concern at the Foreign Office, the British High Commission in Mumbai wrote to the Bangladeshi authorities asking for its Customs Intelligence and Investigation Department to investigate the trafficking. The Bangladesh government's response in the short term was swift. It set up a secret committee comprising members of its Criminal Investigation Department, the Rapid Action Battalion - the government's specialist anti-corruption squad - and Special Branch to investigate the claims. Over a four-month period the group interviewed scores of suspects, examined box-loads of import/export licences and ploughed through thousands of shipping licences during an exhaustive investigation that produced an extensive picture of Bangladesh's heroin trade to Britain and, crucially, named names.

And then? And then nothing.

With a global workforce of 3,000, BD Foods is one of Bangladesh's most respected companies. Its chairman, Bodrudoza Momen, has been awarded the title of 'Commercially Important Person' by the Bangladeshi government for his 'outstanding performance in export business' for three years running.

Though few Britons will be familiar with the company's name, the chances are that they have sampled its products. Established in the UK in 1996, BD Foods and its sister company, King & Co, export vast amounts of spices, snacks and pickles to Britain's curry houses. Their parent company, BD Group, is the largest exporter of Bangladeshi fresh fish and fruit. Unfortunately for BD Foods, a number of its consignments now lie stranded in ports around the world as customs officials probe their contents.

The freeze stems from the leaking of the special committee's report, which the Bangladeshi government has yet to publish - on the grounds that its investigations are continuing.

The excuse has not stopped some critics in Bangladesh suggesting that the government is trying to protect those accused in the report, which has been obtained by The Observer. It shows that three companies, Emdad Trading, Jamil International and Green Heaven Enterprise, which were smuggling heroin to Britain, were owned by former employees of BD Foods. It transpires that these were in reality 'ghost' companies that were illegally using BD Foods' VAT numbers to obtain export licences so they could ship heroin to businesses in the UK that existed only on letterheads.

Damningly, the report also claims that crooked officials in the port authority and the shipping company were involved in the operation, something which doesn't surprise Bangladeshi traders living in Britain. 'Bangladesh is a poor country,' said Mahmud Hasan, chair of the Consortium of Bengali Associations. 'Corruption is everywhere, it is the history. Developing countries always have these problems. Officials in both Britain and Bangladesh need to work together and be more active on such matters.'

BD Foods categorically rejects any allegation that it is linked to the front companies exporting heroin to the UK and points out that VAT numbers are easy to copy in Bangladesh. In a written statement to The Observer, the company claims a 'vicious circle' of criminals have taken advantage of its good name. 'None of our sister concerns have or had any link with any type of drug smuggling or any of the [front] companies. These allegations are based on a primary report... which was prepared about seven or eight months ago. After the investigation, the related authorities did not find any proof against us and the government did not file any legal case against us.'

The company has now written to the British High Commission to point out that there has never been a problem with any of its consignments exported to Britain. It has also called for 'a proper investigation to find out the culprits' who have been using its tax certificates to obtain export licences. And it has fired one of its employees, whom it believes was orchestrating the operation.

There have been some noticeable successes as a result of intelligence shared between the Bangladeshi and British authorities. Mirza Hamayou Shaukat, 45, is serving 15 years after customs tracked the heroin hidden in the floor tiles from Southampton to his home in Birmingham. This month, a specialist customs team flew to Bangladesh to gather intelligence which may yet yield further arrests. But these are small victories in an unremitting war against the heroin exporters, who have now found a new conduit for their toxic product.

'We are acutely aware of the problem, but it is unfortunate that I cannot say more,' said a spokesman for the British High Commission in Bangladesh.

Close to the 'Golden Crescent' - the remote and far-flung parts of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where most of the world's heroin is produced - Bangladesh is well placed to act as a conduit for the drug trade. And the real concern now is that the country's burgeoning business in exporting heroin is symptomatic of a wider problem, one that is about to become increasingly urgent following this year's poppy harvest in Afghanistan.

'Early signs for 2006 indicate that opium cultivation is up in 13 provinces,' the UN's Lewis said. 'Villagers appear to have planted crops on a scale equal to or exceeding that of 2005, and most of the harvesting will be over in about one month's time. It's a natural thing for the trafficking organisations to try to find new routes out to the lucrative markets beyond west Asia. We estimate that about one-third of the Afghan crop exits via Pakistan. Some of this is shipped via northern India and leaves south Asia through Bangladesh. What we saw in Bangladesh in 2005 may well recur if the Afghan crop is again large this year.'

GANGSTER DIED AFTER STRUGGLE WITH COPS Apr 25 2006


Exclusive Gunman in club bust-up with two off-duty officers

By Steven Ventura


A GANGSTER who walked into a bar with a gun died after a struggle involving two off-duty cops.

Strathclyde Police have now asked another force to carry out an independent investigation into the death on Sunday of convicted armed robber Walter Semple.

It's thought the 35-year-old had intended to shoot a rival in the leg as a "frightener"- or a warning - after they had fallen out.

But he was spotted with the handgun in the toilet of the Waterside miners welfare club, Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, which was showing the Old Firm game live on TV at the time.

A struggle involving the hardman and two off-duty cops ended with Semple being declared dead at the scene.

Yesterday, a police spokesman confirmed two officers had been involved.

He said: "Strathclyde Police have asked Tayside Police to review the circumstances of this incident and Assistant Chief Constable Iain MacLeod has been appointed to head this review.

"This is normal procedure given the involvement of two off-duty police officers."

Sources said Semple planned to shoot a man in the club in the leg after a petty row days earlier. But customers saw the gun and a struggle developed in a toilet.

No shots were fired but Semple was dead minutes later.

A post-mortem was carried out yesterday but police did not release any details of its findings.

Sources in the pub said Semple's neck may have been broken in the struggle. Another theory was that he suffered a heart attack.

Semple was a career criminal who served three years in jail after agangland shoot-out in Cardiff.

That incident followed his release from prison in Glasgow, where he was jailed for four years for robbing an ice cream van at gunpoint in 1994.

He also worked as an enforcer for notorious gangster Stewart "Specky" Boyd, who died in a car crash in Spain three years ago.

12 years for drug deal ringleader
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotlan...est/4945664.stm

Drug world 'Mr Big' gets 12 years
RHIANNON EDWARD

SCOTLAND's biggest drugs baron was yesterday jailed for 12 years at the conclusion of an international operation which has seen nine men sentenced to 41 years in prison in this county and in Spain.

John Gorman was arrested as part of Operation Folklore, led by the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency (SDEA), which saw authorities seize £61 million of drugs over two years.

The 49-year-old, from Irvine, Ayrshire, known as the "Mr Big" of Scotland's drugs world, was convicted of supplying heroin and cocaine, and money laundering, during a trial in Glasgow last month.

During Operation Folklore - which also involved Spanish police, Europol, customs and the National Crime Squad - drugs including heroin and cocaine were recovered.

But the operation culminated in eight tonnes of cannabis being recovered from the British-registered trawler MV Squilla off the coast of Spain last June.

Gorman had originally been charged with drug smuggling but the prosecution withdrew that charge due to insufficient evidence.

However, he was found guilty of being involved in the supply of drugs with a street value of more than £360,000 and laundering £178,000 of drug money.

Yesterday also saw William McDonald, 46, from Renfrew, given four years, Mushtaq Ahmed, 51, from Bradford, seven years and James Lowrie, 60, from Liverpool, four years for their involvement in the operation.

A fifth man, Robert Thomson, 27, from Irvine, admitted being involved in the supply of £12,000 of cannabis and was given 18 months. Judge Lord Bracadale told Gorman: "

The profits were high and so were the risks. The appropriate sentence is 12 years."

After the sentencing, Graeme Pearson, of the SDEA, said: "There isn't an Ayrshire town or village which escaped the suffering, misery and tragedy inflicted as a result of activities of this group.

"Gorman and his associates funded comfortable lifestyles on the backs of many thousands of people stricken by the scourge of drug abuse. Families did without to give them profit. These convictions hit back at that.

"This result goes some way towards delivering justice along with the pursuit of criminal assets."

Four of the gang were also sentenced in Madrid yesterday.

Douglas Prince, 50, from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, was given four years, William Reid, 44, from Glasgow, got three years, Arno Podder, 38, from Estonia, received three years and Sufian Mohammed Dris, 22, from Morocco, also got three years.

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=628452006

Last updated: 27-Apr-06 01:52 BST

24 April 2006
GUN-WIELDING GANGSTER DIES IN CLUB BUST-UP
Exclusive Thug had planned to shoot rival
By Steven Ventura

A GANGSTER died yesterday after a bust-up at a packed pub.

Walter Semple, 35, died after he took a handgun into a social club intending to shoot a rival in the leg.

But the career criminal, who had the weapon tucked inside his coat, was rumbled when other drinkers spotted it.

A source said: "He went to the toilet and a pal of his realised what he was up to.

"He tried to stop him from going back out into the bar with the gun but Semple wasn't interested.

"More guys tried to intervene and Semple went ballistic.

"They dragged him into a side room and someone said, 'Call the police, he's got a gun'.

"When he heard that he went even more crazy and was struggling to get away. He headbutted one of the guys but they threw him to the ground.

"Semple was face down and said he couldn't breathe."

It's believed the hardman, who had served time for armed robbery, either choked to death or suffered a broken neck.

The incident happened at the Waterside Miners Welfare club in Kirkintilloch. Semple's intended victim is believed to have been a nightclub bouncer in the town.

The pair had fallen out and Semple planned a "frightener" - where a victim is wounded as a warning.

The bar was packed with drinkers watching the Old Firm match on TV at the time of Semple's death.

After the incident, everyone in the pub was kept back by police and quizzed over the death.

One man, who didn't want to be named, said: "I was upstairs at the bingo when an announcement came over the PA system that no one was to leave the pub until the police arrived. Someone then said a guy had come into the bar downstairs with a gun.

"There was a struggle and his neck was broken."

Semple had formerly worked as an enforcer for notorious gangster Stewart "Specky" Boyd, who died in a car crash in Spain three years ago.

Murder cops quizzed Semple over the shooting of crime king Tony McGovern in 2000 and the discovery of the body of Martin Toner two years ago.

He was not believed to have been involved in either killing.

Police confirmed a report was being prepared for the procurator fiscal over his death.

==

25 April 2006
GANGSTER DIED AFTER STRUGGLE WITH COPS
Exclusive Gunman in club bust-up with two off-duty officers
By Steven Ventura

A GANGSTER who walked into a bar with a gun died after a struggle involving two off-duty cops.

Strathclyde Police have now asked another force to carry out an independent investigation into the death on Sunday of convicted armed robber Walter Semple.

It's thought the 35-year-old had intended to shoot a rival in the leg as a "frightener"- or a warning - after they had fallen out.

But he was spotted with the handgun in the toilet of the Waterside miners welfare club, Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, which was showing the Old Firm game live on TV at the time.

A struggle involving the hardman and two off-duty cops ended with Semple being declared dead at the scene.

Yesterday, a police spokesman confirmed two officers had been involved.

He said: "Strathclyde Police have asked Tayside Police to review the circumstances of this incident and Assistant Chief Constable Iain MacLeod has been appointed to head this review.

"This is normal procedure given the involvement of two off-duty police officers."

Sources said Semple planned to shoot a man in the club in the leg after a petty row days earlier. But customers saw the gun and a struggle developed in a toilet.

No shots were fired but Semple was dead minutes later.

A post-mortem was carried out yesterday but police did not release any details of its findings.

Sources in the pub said Semple's neck may have been broken in the struggle. Another theory was that he suffered a heart attack.

Semple was a career criminal who served three years in jail after agangland shoot-out in Cardiff.

That incident followed his release from prison in Glasgow, where he was jailed for four years for robbing an ice cream van at gunpoint in 1994.

He also worked as an enforcer for notorious gangster Stewart "Specky" Boyd, who died in a car crash in Spain three years ago.

7 May 2006
TERRIFIED SECURITY BOSS SAYS HE'S BEEN RUN OUT OF TOWN
By Billy Paterson

A SECURITY firm boss has fled Scotland after rivals threatened to mutilate his children.

Brian Collins also received death threats and his £26,000 car was torched in his driveway.

Gangster-run security firms have been trying to force the 40-year-old's firm, Hayleigh Enterprises Ltd, out of business for three years.

Brian refused to cave in - but immediately put the company up for sale after thugs targeted Hayleigh, eight, and Holly, four.

Last night, he said: "They have said they are going to cut my daughters' fingers off and shoot me.

"It is different when they are threatening me but when it comes to my kids you just have to say enough is enough.

"The police are treating this as very serious. They know and I know who it is. But we don't have proof."

Brian - who has fled his home in Inverkip, Renfew-shire, with his girls and wife Lynne - has now sold his firm. He employed 40 people in his Gourock base and hundreds of others in Northern England.

During the terror campaign, more than £1million of damage was caused to sites his firm was protecting and staff were threatened.

The latest threats came as he bid for contracts with Inverclyde Council. Brian said: "I'm going far away. My family are out of there and that's all that matters."

Underworld king Ferris to hold court at festival
BRIAN FERGUSON CITY COUNCIL REPORTER

ONE of Scotland's most feared gangland figures is being given star billing in a major literary celebration in Edinburgh.

Paul Ferris, who has become a best-selling novelist since his release from jail four years ago, has been confirmed for an appearance in next month's Festival of Scottish Writing.

The Glasgow gunrunner is lined up for a talk and book-signing session just 12 months after claims that he was moving in on the Capital's taxi scene.

The annual event is the second biggest - after the International Book Festival in Charlotte Square - to be staged in the Capital under the Unesco Edinburgh World City of Literature banner.

Ferris will be appearing with the crime writer Reg McKay, one of the country's leading experts on gangland crime, at an event in McDonald Road library, to be hosted by former Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan.

The notorious underworld figure has twice teamed up with McKay to write books about his life, with debut The Ferris Conspiracy tipped to be turned into a major feature film starring Robert Carlyle in the title role.

The latest book, Vendetta, which was released by Edinburgh-based Black and White Publishing, is billed as "a story of international gangsters, hit contracts, murders, bank scams, Essex-boy torturers, corrupt politics, crack-head hit-men, knife duels, securi-wars, drugs, guns, Yardies, terrorists and more".

Publicist Gillian Mackay said: "Paul and Reg did a similar event at Borders in Glasgow last year and it was very successful, and the book was done exceptionally well since it was released."

Labour councillor Shami Khan, a member of Lothian and Borders Police Board, said: "He's perfectly entitled to promote his book and I think there will be enough public interest in him to justify his inclusion in the programme."

Tory group leader Iain Whyte said: "I would hope that the council is satisfied that he is no longer involved in any criminal activities and really has gone clean."

The city council, which ploughs £5000 into the annual event, said: "Ferris exposes the brutal underworld of Britain's streets and tells more of his story 'going straight' and life after release from prison in 2002."

The Festival of Scottish Writing, which this year runs from May 12-29, is the major literary event organised by the city council and features author readings, workshops, debates, performance poetry, storytelling and children's activities held in libraries and other venues across Edinburgh.

Crime is a main theme of this year's festival, which also features Edinburgh author Lin Anderson, creator of the forensic scientist character Rhona MacLeod.

And the festival will see an appearance from Allan Guthrie, the former Edinburgh bookshop assistant dubbed "the new Ian Rankin", who gave up his job after being offered a five-figure advance for a crime trilogy.

Edinburgh's culture and leisure leader Ricky Henderson said: "The festival celebrates many of our country's contemporary writers and will hopefully provide inspiration for the next generation of Scottish talent."
Gangland enforcer with a taste for violence

PAUL FERRIS came to public prominence in the early 1990s, but by then he was already well-known to police.

At 16, Ferris was a leg-man for the infamous Arthur Thompson firm, establishing himself as a fearless thief.

His taste for violence was evident early on, but despite being linked to stabbings, slashings, blindings and knee-cappings, Ferris would always emerge relatively unscathed.

As Glasgow's heroin market flourished in the early 1980s, the ambitious Ferris would also secretly organise his own criminal operations under the cover of apparently legitimate business interests.

In the 1980s, he broke free of the Thompson family and became linked with Tam "The Licensee" McGraw. Their relationship broke down when Ferris accused his ally of setting him up in a drugs bust.

Rivalry with the Thompson family peaked when Ferris was charged with killing Arthur Thompson Jnr in 1991. Ferris was cleared, but was jailed in 1998 after being found guilty of a string of charges involving the supply of weapons.

This article: http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=602112006

Last updated: 21-Apr-06 16:35 BST

Van Hoogstraten loses appeal bid
Nicholas van Hoogstraten cannot appeal against a ruling that he was involved in the murder of a rival businessman.
The property tycoon, 60, from Uckfield in East Sussex, was refused permission on Thursday to put forward evidence over Mohammed Raja's death in 1999.

The High Court ruled last December, at a civil hearing not attended by Mr van Hoogstraten, that he hired two hitmen who stabbed and shot Mr Raja.

The Court of Appeal said he had denied himself the chance of a defence case.

'No errors'

Lord Justice Brooke and Lord Justice Sedley, sitting at the Appeal Court on Thursday, said the High Court judgment by Mr Justice Lightman was based on all the available evidence and contained "no errors of law or fact".

Mr van Hoogstraten, they said, could not now present his own arguments or cross-examine witnesses, having decided not to do so in December.

The multi-millionaire was cleared in the criminal courts of the killing, but he now faces a £6m civil damages claim from Mr Raja's family and estate.

Mr van Hoogstraten said he will not pay a penny and has so far refused to meet costs orders totalling £535,000.

Assets of his amounting to £5m have been frozen by the High Court.

Mr Raja was killed when he answered the doorbell at his home in Sutton, south London, in July 1999.

Two men are serving life in prison for his murder.

Why good women love their bad fellas
CLARE LONGRIGG

THE spectacular fall of criminal lawyer Angela Baillie, who was recently convicted of smuggling heroin and diazepam to one of her clients in Barlinnie jail, no doubt had heads shaking in disbelief in judges' chambers. But Baillie's downfall began, we understand, years earlier.

Before she even embarked on a career in the criminal courts, she was said to be fascinated by gangsters. While studying law at Glasgow University, Baillie had a Saturday job at Versace, selling Baroque silk shirts to flash customers.

A former colleague remembers: "If there was a famous footballer and a gangster in the store at the same time, Angela would always serve the gangster. She thought gangsters were glamorous."

A single mother, Baillie worked hard and played hard. She developed a cocaine habit to fuel her nights out in Glasgow clubs and her days in court. Like many defence lawyers who revel in reflected celebrity, she enjoyed the notoriety of her clients. Although she claims she was coerced, it's possible to imagine how Baillie, eager to please her client (reportedly serving time for a gangland killing), decided to smuggle into jail the drugs he asked her for, rather than alert the authorities.

Baillie would not be the first lawyer to be seduced by the criminal world. A glamorous blonde American lawyer, Dorothy Suffel, threw away her career when she embarked on an affair with a Mafia boss from the Colombo crime family of New York. Suffel was a respectable girl and had not been married long when she met mobster Andrew Russo, 30 years her senior, at a party on Long Island. She was "honoured" by his attention and quickly became his mistress.

He took her for dinner at Elaine's, the exclusive mob hangout on New York's Upper East Side, and to parties where Hollywood stars rubbed shoulders with Mafiosi. Before long, she was doing legal work for the family, visiting Russo's crew members in jail, taking messages to and from the inmates and running errands for the organisation. She desperately wanted to make herself useful and to be accepted by the mobsters as one of their own.

Suffel's mistake was to assume that once she had started a relationship with Russo that she was still a free agent. One of his crew members serving time for armed robbery and attempted murder was Larry Fiorenza - a drug addict with cirrhosis of the liver and HIV. Unprepossessing as he sounds, Suffel found Fiorenza irresistible - she later admitted she wanted to save him. They started an affair, consummated in the prison visiting rooms. In her briefcase she smuggled in food, vitamins and condoms.

By the time Russo found out about Dorothy's indiscretion, she was under investigation for aiding and abetting a criminal. It was clear she was in far more danger for her amorous exploits than her illegal activities, so she and Fiorenza turned state's evidence and fled for the safety of the witness protection programme.

Disbarred and disgraced, Suffel now lives under an assumed name, far from home, alone - her marriage to Fiorenza did not survive long outside the steamy atmosphere of the penitentiary.

Some women can't resist a violent criminal who is safely behind bars. The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, recently got engaged to a woman who has been writing to him for some years. Although he will never be released, the happy couple reportedly talk about their future life together.

Sutcliffe's attraction for the many women who write to him is particularly baffling, however there are cases in which women contact a prisoner on humanitarian grounds and, having persuaded themselves he is innocent, dedicate themselves to his welfare and eventual release with passionate fervour. The injustice of a wrongful conviction adds fire to these long-distance romances.

One woman who may be regretting her arduous campaign on behalf of an inmate is Karen Torley, from Cambuslang. Torley started writing several years ago to Kenny Richey, a Scot on Death Row in Ohio. He was convicted of murdering a little girl who died in a fire at his ex-girlfriend's house, but has always maintained his innocence. After they had been corresponding for some months, the pair became engaged, and Torley helped launch a high-profile campaign for Richey's release.

Torley's efforts seemed to be about to bear fruit when the original conviction was overturned last year, but Richey remains in prison, awaiting the outcome of further appeals. Meanwhile, he has rekindled his relationship with his ex-wife after a 20-year hiatus, and faithful Torley has been given the push. In an interview from prison, Richey, 41, played the romantic hero, torn between the love of two women. His sense of his own desirability is apparently undimmed by the orange prison jumpsuit and shackles.

"I still love Karen, but I'm not in love with her," he said. "I wish her the best, but I can't keep going on the way I am. I'm just being torn apart. I'm grateful for everything she's done and for her love, but things kicked off with my ex-wife and I'm playing both sides. It needs to stop."

Torley, who has devoted eight years of her life to freeing her man, has so far not expressed any rage, though to do so would be understandable, but admits she was "devastated" when Richey told her he was in love with his ex.

It's a disappointing result for those of us who have followed the case, curious as to whether a long-term, long-distance relationship between two people who have never touched could survive normal married life.

Not all women who get involved with dangerous men want to save them: some are looking for protection. Scottish comedian Janey Godley endured a grim childhood, with two alcoholic parents and years of sexual abuse by her creepy uncle. At 18, she met Sean Storrie, son of an East Glasgow gangster.

He didn't exactly charm her off her feet, but she was interested in this hardman who worked as a bouncer.

"I couldn't stand him," she recalls. "He was so moody. But when he asked me out, I said yes out of curiosity."

Being a tough lad from a rough family, young Storrie wasn't fazed when Godley told him about her traumatic history. He just listened to her, and she loved him for it.

Not to say it was a perfect marriage: the couple ran a pub in the East End of Glasgow for her gangster father-in-law, where drugs were rife and violence an occupational hazard. A police raid on the pub uncovered caches of weapons Storrie's father had hidden in the back yard. Storrie knocked Godley about, and she ran away repeatedly.

Unlike most of the women who find themselves married to the mob, Godley seems to have effected a transformation on her man. He became a reformed character and stopped beating her, while she launched a successful career as a stand-up comedian, using the dark material of her past for laughs. Last year she published her memoir, Handstands in the Dark, including "handy hints on how to get Semtex off your walls".

Even though she was a victim of violence herself, she admits it has its uses: she doesn't need to worry about being sought out by the uncle who abused her, as she's got protection.

"I married into a family who really don't like men who abuse children," she says defiantly. "My husband's one of seven sons from the East End."

For a woman at a low point in her life, the protection of a mobster can be a powerful attraction. Marilyn Wisbey had gangland pedigree: her father was one of the Great Train Robbers, and her mother, who had knitted the balaclavas used in the raid - "She knew it was going to be a big one, but she didn't know it was going to be the train. She had to make the balaclavas. When they tried them on, one eye was up there," Wisbey points to her forehead, wheezing with laughter, "and one was down here," she indicates her cheekbone. "But at least she tried..." - took her girls to Harrods to spend the proceeds.

But when she met Mad Frankie Fraser, former associate of London's notorious Kray brothers, Wisbey was down on her luck: "Dad just got nicked for drugs, my husband asked me for a divorce, all my friends deserted me, and all I could do was drown my sorrows." She was singing in a bar when Fraser approached her, and she was quick to establish her credentials.

"I said 'D'you know who I am?' He said, 'No.' I said, 'I'm Tommy Wisbey's daughter'. He said, 'Ooh.'"

The ageing gangster and his moll were together for more than ten years. "He's been a big pal, Frank," Wisbey says. "Diamond. He's my rock."

Their first date was a visit to her father in prison. On the train they ate a picnic of smoked salmon sandwiches and drank Champagne.

They'd been together a few months when Frank was shot in the face as they came out of a nightclub. She recalls: "When they let me in to the hospital to visit him, I said, 'F****** hell Frank, that was some powerful shot of vodka we had last night.' He said, 'Don't make me laugh.' I just held up a bowl for him to be sick. I'd only known him three months. I thought, 'I can't leave him.'

"Most sensible women would have got out a bit lively but I thought, no."

Some women are drawn to dangerous men simply because they can't resist the thrill. Brenda Colletti was raised in a tiny hick town and ran away to Philadelphia in search of excitement. She found it in the shape of Philip, an up-and-coming hitman in the South Philly Mafia. When they went to bars, people would send over drinks.

They ate in restaurants owned by gangsters and never picked up the tab. Philip bought her a gun and she would practise shooting in the basement of their house. She was hooked on the glamour of it, quoting lines from The Godfather and talking about "respect".

By day they plotted hits at the kitchen table; by night they slept with guns under the mattress. "It was really cool," she purrs. "We were just bad people."

• No Questions Asked: The Secret Life of Women in the Mob by Clare Longrigg. Published by Miramax Books, £15.99.

This article: http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=648362006

Last updated: 30-Apr-06 00:54 BST

Drugs baron to appeal conviction


A man jailed for 22 years for running a multi-million pound drugs operation is to challenge his conviction.
Abdullah Baybasin, of Edgware, north London, was jailed on Monday after being found guilty of conspiracy to supply heroin in February.



Baybasin's lawyers said he "vigorously maintains his innocence in relation to the drugs charge" and confirmed appeal proceedings had begun.

Much of Britain's heroin trade has been linked to the Turkish national.

The court heard he used a gang to racketeer, import drugs and instil fear into London's Turkish and Kurdish community and extort vast amounts of money from businesses.

Shot by rival

He was convicted of conspiracy to supply heroin at Woolwich Crown Court in February.

He had also admitted conspiracy to blackmail and to pervert the course of justice.

But a statement from his solicitors said: "Abdullah Baybasin has always been very much anti-drugs".

Baybasin, who uses a wheelchair after being shot by a rival, is believed to have been in the international drugs trade for at least two decades.

But it was the relatively small seizure of 5.5lb (about 2.5 kilos) of heroin that led to his arrest.

A transaction between a Liverpool-based heroin dealer and a Kurdish gang was watched by the National Crime Squad.

Months of surveillance and phone records placed Baybasin at the heart of the drugs deal.

Ten other members of his gang have already been convicted and jailed for between five and 16 years for a variety of offences including kidnap and supplying heroin.

22 May 2006

HIGH COURT BOMBED BY GANG OF HEAVIES
CRIMES THAT ROCKED SCOTLAND:DISCOS AND DEATH

A HUGE armed mob robbed the country at will. Worse, the cops didn't have a clue who they were. Over three years in the mid 1970s, the gang drove the police crazy. A battalion of armed raiders were hitting hospital pay rolls, wages depots and banks with military precision all over Scotland.

Every time some bank was robbed the media would blame the faceless gang. The cops said nothing.

Yet the journalists were right and didn't even know the half of it. It got to hysterical proportions. Ordinary folk fretted their wages were going to be stolen or a trip to the shops could land them in the middle of a full-scale shoot out.

It wasn't as if the folk of Glasgow were unused to armed robbers. In 1973, Al Brown and Sid Draper led a raid on the British Engineering Works in Townhead and a poor night watchman was shot and killed.

That was awful but that lot had been quickly caught and jailed. This new big mob seemed to be invincible.

The police were under pressure and yet clueless about the gang's ID. So clueless they had to give them a name.

XYY Gang, came from the radio code used by the cops. The more dangerous a wanted culprit was the further through the alphabet their code was.

For this team there was no doubt - XYY, the most lethal criminals in Scotland.

When the breakthrough came from an informant, many of the gang were found in Maryhill and in the south side of Glasgow, right under police noses, hundreds of yards from Orkney Street police station.

The cops thought it was the end of the matter but the trouble was just starting.

Walter Norval, a well-known face from the west of Glasgow, was the ringleader.

Norval was a hard man, a gangster of the old school who ruled with iron yet always according to a code.

He had made his name in the gangs, moving on to protection rackets, working pubs, clubs and bookies then, of course, to robbery.

Being a tough guy wasn't Norval's only strength - he had brains, too. With 13 men in custody, the cops began to unravel the scale of the operation.

Scores of large robberies, hundreds of foot soldiers, secret weapons arsenals and explosives.

So big they came up with another name for the team, Norval's Crime Syndicate.

Norval had run his large outfit with a mixture of discipline and determination - that's why they had survived so long.

After their arrest, the same attributes produced explosive results. The trial, due to start in November 1977, had to be delayed when the High Court in Glasgow was bombed in an effort to destroy all the paperwork relating to the case.

Norval's daughter, Rita Gunn, was charged with conspiring to damage the famous North Court but was acquitted. Rita's husband, William Gunn, wasn't so lucky, getting five years in jail for threatening to kill one of the leading witnesses.

The judges - four in all as the gang were to face separate trials - had to be constantly guarded by armed police. Jurors also came under attack and were provided with police bodyguards for the duration.

A leading prosecution witness in prison at the time was provided with a constant police escort and kept in solitary confinement. In spite of this, he was scalded with boiling water.

Glasgow was in turmoil. Who exactly was running the city? Had organised teams got so big and powerful the cops were out of their depth?

Other problems emerged in court. Though the Crown thought they had good inside information on how the gang worked, Norval had kept everything tight. Only he knew exactly what was going on. And he was old school - he wasn't talking.

For a while, it looked as if Norval and his crew were going to beat the powers of the state. Eventually, six were acquitted and seven found guilty of the armed robbery of a bank and a hospital payroll.

Out of many big armed robberies they could only get two jobs to stick.

The cops were furious. They were even angrier when Norval got only 14 years.

The remaining members of the gang went on to commit more robberies, many becoming major players in organised crime. Meantime, Norval served his sentence quietly.

A popular man in jail, he often organised concerts for the cons' entertainment and was never slow to get up on the stage himself. Norval was old school - he wasn't going to let a bit of jail time get him down.

The world had all but forgotten about Walter Norval until June 1999 when a 71-year old man limped into the dock at Glasgow Sheriff Court and pled Not Guilty to possessing cannabis.

His lawyer said the old man used it to relieve the pain of arthritis. The Crown believed him and dismissed the case.

Walter Norval, the most feared gang leader of the 1970s was back in court. This time without bombs.

GANGSTER BLINK BIDS FOR GODFATHER'S PUB

May 27 2006


Exclusive He plans Gers club

By Derek Alexander


GANGSTER Ian "Blink" McDonald is bidding to buy a pub once owned by Glasgow Godfather Arthur Thompson snr.

The convicted bank robber is behind a proposal to take over the notorious underworld haunt, The Provanmill Inn.

McDonald plans to turn the infamous boozer into a Rangers supporters' club.

But the 44-year-old villain has already told pals that he expects the bar to be targeted by rivals.

The Provanmill shut almost two years ago after a series of fires.

The Glasgow bar - which was a crime HQ for Thompson and his gang - was at the centre of a turf war with another pub.

A petrol canister was found at the most recent blaze by investigators.

McDonald was a regular at the Provanmill Inn. He used to drink in the bar with hood Paul Ferris when they were both young men.

The pair planned crime sprees across Europe from the pub.

Gangster Tam "The Licensee" McGraw also hatched plans there.

The Provanmill was run by Thompson's son, drug baron Arthur jnr, until he was shot dead in 1991. Thompson snr died in 1993 and his younger son Billy ran it briefly before he was seriously assaulted six years ago.

A source said: "Blink is desperate to get his hands on the pub.

"He is a Rangers fan and one of the first things that he wants to do is start a supporters' club and run buses travelling to games.

"But he knows the same people who wanted to put the Provanmill out of business are still around. That hasn't put him off though."

Trust Inns, the Provanmill's current owners, put the pub on the market through estate agents Creevy LLH at offers over £99,500.

The Provanmill Inn featured in a documentary on Ferris last year.

Ferris told how Arthur jnr read out a hit-list of men he planned to kill, including him, in the pub.

Arthur jnr, nicknamed Fatboy, was killed hours later. Ferris was charged with murder but acquitted after a High Court trial.

McDonald was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his part in a £6million b ank robbery.

He served 10 years before being released on parole in 2001 but was briefly behind bars again in 2003.

A Creevy LLH spokeswoman said: "I can only confirm that The Provanmill Inn is under offer."


Top

Asian tycoon named as drug baron
After an Observer investigation into heroin trade, respected Bangladesh food firm boss is held

Jamie Doward and Mahtab Haider in Bangladesh
Sunday May 28, 2006
Observer

The chairman of one of Bangladesh's most respected companies has been arrested on suspicion of trafficking vast quantities of heroin into Britain. The arrest follows an Observer investigation last month which revealed how consignments of food, floor tiles and beauty products, dispatched by a network of companies in Bangladesh, were found to contain large amounts of the drug.

The story prompted concerns that Bangladesh, previously not known to be a major exporter of the drug, was becoming a new conduit for trafficking heroin into Britain.

Badruddoza Chowdhury Momen, chairman of BD Foods Ltd, which supplies spices and other food products to Britain's curry houses, is now in prison on remand awaiting questioning.

His arrest came after a former senior employee within BD Foods, Nazmul Haider Bulbul, named him in court documents as the mastermind behind the long-running drug smuggling operation. According to the documents, six senior government officials are also alleged to have taken part in the scheme.

Sources close to the investigation said Momen was being questioned about allegations that he smuggled about 948kg of heroin to the UK over the past 15 years and that he ran a lucrative drug distribution business out of the UK to other EU states. It is alleged that Momen was sourcing the heroin mainly from Pakistan, where he had an office.

The tycoon's arrest has shocked the Bangladeshi business community. Momen was awarded the title of 'Commercially Important Person' by the Bangladesh government for his outstanding performance in export business' for three years running. His company employs 3,000 staff around the world.

Last month The Observer reported that a network of ghost companies linked to BD Foods was responsible for exporting heroin to the UK. There was no suggestion the company itself was involved in the trafficking operation.

The smuggling operation came to light after the British High Commission wrote to the Bangladesh government in 2005 asking it to investigate a number of firms that had dispatched heroin hidden in consignments of legitimate products to fake import companies based in London.

Customs were alerted after three unclaimed consignments turned up at Southampton and Felixstowe last year containing heroin with a total value of £10m. The High Commission's request prompted the Bangladeshi government to establish a committee to investigate. It found that at least five companies with close links to BD Foods were involved in trafficking heroin.

The owner of another Bangladeshi exporting company, Rainbow International, has also admitted his involvement in shipping 54kg of heroin to the UK in March-April 2005. Kazi Zafar Rezaul was arrested on 5 May and has admitted his involvement in shipping over 100kg of heroin to Britain.

BD Foods was unavailable for comment last week. The company's premises had been raided by investigators and no staff came to the phone. Calls to several senior executives and emails to the company went unanswered.

However, in a written statement to The Observer earlier in the year, the company blamed a 'vicious circle' of criminals for taking advantage of its good name. 'None of our sister concerns have or had any link with any type of drug smuggling or any of the [front] companies,' it said. 'These allegations are based on a primary report ... which was prepared about seven or eight months ago. After the investigation, the related authorities did not find any proof against us and the government did not file any legal case against us.'

27 May 2006
BRITS HELD ON £12MILLION 'HOLS CON'
By Mark Dowdney
FOUR Britons have been arrested in Spain over an alleged £12million time-share fraud.


Detectives said 15,000 people were hit - several thousand of them British. A police source said: "Many people will have lost their life savings."


The four, described by police as the "ringleaders", were named as Malcolm Kennedy, 32, Willy Smie-ja, 44, Steven Ross, 53, and Rupert Marshall, 37.


They allegedly sold people the same timeshare rentals on the Costa del Sol and holiday packages that did not exist.


Police claim they also got staff to cold call time-share owners and offer to sell their annual holiday allowance - then asked for admin fees and taxes on work they never did.


Spain's National Police said: "Many victims waited years to contact us."

Further searches over gun attack


Police investigating the shooting of leading loyalist Mark Haddock have carried out more searches in Belfast.
Two men are still being questioned by detectives about the attack.

The 36-year-old, who remains seriously ill, was shot six times in the Doagh Road area of Newtownabbey, County Antrim, on Tuesday.

Police would like to speak to anyone who noticed a blue Renault Clio, registration RBZ 922, in the Doagh Road area on Monday or Tuesday of last week.

The car was later found burned out at Tynan Close in Monkstown.

The gun attack took place at Mossley Orange Hall after the victim got out of his car.

Mr Haddock is on bail on a charge of attempting to murder doorman Trevor Gowdy at a social club in Monkstown.

He was named in that court case as a leading member of the Ulster Volunteer Force. Judgement in the trial has been reserved.

THURSDAY 01/06/2006 08:30:09
UVF members shot Haddock

UTV has learned that top loyalist Mark Haddock was shot by UVF members.
By:UTV and Press Association


But sources say the 36-year-old`s attempted murder was not sanctioned by the organisation`s leadership.

Forensic officers were at the scene of the shooting yesterday morning trying to piece together what happened and who did it.


Mark Haddock was shot six times at Old Carrick Road just before 4pm yesterday afternoon.

He is now critically ill in the Royal Victoria Hospital.

Forensic officers concentrated their examination at the spot where he was shot on the road close to Mossley Orange Hall.

UTV has learned that Haddock had been lured to a meeting and that he was shot by UVF members.

But the source says the murder was not sanctioned by the UVF leadership. The organisation had been the prime suspect.

Haddock had been living under a UVF death threat from November 2005 when it was revealed that he had been an informer for 16 years. He was reputedly the UVF leader in Mount Vernon in north Belfast, but was awaiting a judge`s ruling on his trial for the attempted murder of Trevor Gowdy.

The nightclub doorman was abducted from a club in Monkstown, Newtownabbey in 2002 and attacked with an iron bar and hatchet. The trial made legal history when the victim was allowed to give evidence from a secret location in England.

The attempted killing of Haddock yesterday has been condemned by the British government.

Already the shooting has led to uncomfortable questions being asked about the Ulster Unionist party`s decision to align itself to the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP).

An Ulster Unionist Assembly member Esmond Birnie says that if the UVF was found to be involved in the shooting his party should sever its links with the PUP.

Even though the UVF are the main suspects for the attempted assassination, the organisation`s chief political adviser tonight insisted it did not sanction the shooting.

David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party which is linked to the UVF, said he had sought out assurances from authoritative figures and been told no authorisation was given.

He said: "Events will unfold that will make that clear. I believe it was opportunistic.

"This man clearly had a substantial number of enemies."

The shooting has piled huge political pressure on the Ulster Unionist Party because it has controversially aligned itself with the PUP.

Sir Reg Empey, the UUP leader who brought Mr Ervine into his Assembly team two weeks ago in a bid to increase his party`s political strength at the Stormont Parliament, insisted he was trying to stop such violence.

He added:"We have a political arrangement with one MLA (Mr Ervine) and that does, of course, have negative things with it.

"But there is also a longer term commitment I have made. I am prepared to give it a real try."


The police investigation is at an early stage and so far they have said nothing about who they believe is responsible.

Detectives have appealed for witnesses and especially want information about a black Peugeot 309 car which was seen in the Newtownabbey and south Antrim area yesterday.

Informer linked to 21 murders

04 June 2006
SPECIAL Branch informer Mark Haddock has been linked to 21 murders and branded a serial killer.

He was publicly identified as being involved in nine murders by Irish Labour TD Pat Rabbitte using Dail privilege.

He named the victims as being:

Sharon McKenna in 1993;

Catholic builders Gary Convie and Eamon Fox in 1994;

Alleged informer Thomas Sheppard in 1996;

Protestant clergyman Rev David Templeton in 1997;

Billy Harbinson in 1997;

Raymond McCord jnr in 1997;

Former UDA commander Tommy English 2000;

David Greer in 2000.

Back | Return to top | Printable Story

Daily Record NEWS
14 June 2006
INFORMER VANISHED 'OFF FACE OF EARTH'
EXCLUSIVE Double murder trial told grass was 'eliminated'
By Richard Elias
A POLICE informant who "disappeared off the face of the Earth" after returning to Scotland was murdered, a court has heard.

Small-time crook Michael Doran travelled up from England with an associate but never came back.

Fellow Glaswegian Stephen McColl is accused of killing the 22-year-old.

He is also accused of killing Phillip Noakes, 30, another minor criminal whose mutilated and naked body was discovered in a shallow grave.

A jury at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday heard that although the murders took place almost three years apart, they were connected.

McColl, 38, is on trial along with another Scot, 23-year-old Daniel Henson, who is charged only with murdering Noakes.


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Both men deny all charges against them.


The court was told both men, who live in Salford, Greater Manchester, were armed robbers who had access to a shotgun.


Prosecutor Peter Wright said both victims had come to be regarded as a "liability" by McColl.


He added: "You may conclude on the evidence you hear that the elimination of these men by McColl and Henson was strictly business. Michael Doran never returned.


"His body has never been found.


"He simply disappeared off the face of the earth."


The prosecutor said that Doran, a drug addict, began to act oddly after becoming a police informant.


This, according to the Crown, made him a liability to McColl and on March 23, 2001, the two men drove to Scotland but only one came back


The court was told that Noakes was an associate of McColl's and he too disappeared without warning after crossing the Scot.


According to Mr Wright, McColl was also a police informant.


The prosecutor said this was ironic as McColl was involved in robberies and he used the opportunity to divert suspicion away from himself and towards others instead, including Noakes. On November 1, 2003, Noakes was seen with both the accused riding a bicycle close to his home on Salford's Ordsall estate.


It is alleged the pair lured him away on the pretence of committing a burglary.


Noakes' bike was later found close to woods by the side of the M60 in Manchester and on December 28, a man walking his dog found his remains.


Mr Wright said Noakes had been shot then his body had been stripped and mutilated in order to prevent it being linked to the killer.


The Crown claim that on the day it is alleged Noakes was killed, both defendants spoke frequently on the phone.


And on November 2, Henson took the night coach from Manchester to Glasgow but kept in close contact with McColl who made his way to Scotland independently later the same day.


McColl is said to have made bizarre comments about the effect of a shotgun wound on a body while taking part in a group session with his probation officer in Clydebank.


He later tried to explain his remarks by saying they had arisen from his time as an undertaker's assistant back in Manchester.


However, Mr Wright said that McColl's job had never brought him into contact with such a victim.


The case continues.

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18 June 2006
STABBED 16 TIMES
EXCLUSIVE Gangster survives hit bid
By Russell Findlay

FEARED drug dealer George " Goofy " Docherty survived being stabbed 16 times in a gangland hit.

Then the 46-year-old mobster signed himself out of hospital - fearful his enemies would get him there.

Now detectives fear Docherty and his gang will take revenge for the attack, sparking a vendetta.

Docherty, who was stabbed in the east end of Glasgow, was sent to prison for seven years in 1996 for a machete attack during a drugs war in Paisley.

He was again jailed in 2001- while out on licence for the machete attack - after being caught with a handgun and bullets.

In Barlinnie jail, Docherty headed a drugs ring and received supplies from shamed lawyer Angela Baillie, 32, who became known as Ally McDeal.

The man who blew the whistle on their business was later almost killed in a revenge attack.

A police spokeswoman said: "A 46-year-old man sustained injuries in Cuthelton Terrace on June 6.

"He was taken to Glasgow Royal Infirmary but later discharged himself."

SUNDAY EMAIL r.findlay@sundaymail.co.uk

Mafia sets up close links with Scottish drugs gangs

LUCY ADAMS, Home Affairs Correspondent June 19 2006

Scottish criminals are stepping up their connections with organised gangs across Europe, including the mafia, to benefit from lucrative drugs and money-laundering schemes.
The head of the agency that combats serious and organised crime in Scotland has called for a financial investigation centre for the whole of Europe to be set up here.
It would be in charge of seizing criminal assets and curbing the growing threat of international operations.
Graeme Pearson, the director of the Scottish Crime and Drugs Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), says the increased networking of Scottish criminals demands greater joint working by the authorities in many countries.
His proposal follows evidence of growing co-operation between criminal gangs in Scotland and those from Eastern Europe and other parts of the Continent. Specialists from the SCDEA have warned that Scottish criminals are working with gangs in countries such as Estonia and Latvia to launder money, because their banking stipulations and legislation are less strict than in the UK.
Cities such as London have reported problems with organised crime from Albania, Russia and Ukraine, and a recent report from Europol, the EU police agency, said 40,000 people were involved in organised crime across Europe.
Eastern European criminals have earned themselves a violent reputation. In Italy, Albanian gangs have muscled the mafia out of many of its traditional haunts.
Mr Pearson said: "We have seen a number of ethnic groups from Albania, Holland and Italy engaging with criminal groups here to do mutual business. The trick is to link our intelligence with financial investigations."
He added: "We now know we can contact financial investigations units in every European country."
His comments follow a two-year operation led by the SCDEA's predecessor, the SDEA, which culminated in eight tonnes of cannabis being recovered from a British-registered trawler intercepted off the west coast of Spain. It involved months of surveillance and Spanish police, Europol, Customs and the National Crime Squad worked with the SDEA to capture the men behind it. Officers seized £61m worth of drugs including heroin and cocaine and arrested nine men in the UK and Spain.
Ringleader John Gorman, 49, from Irvine, Ayrshire, was given a 12-year sentence after he was found guilty of being involved in the supply of drugs with a street value of more than £360,000 and laundering £178,000 of drug money.
Detective Sergeant Gary Deans, of the Scottish money laundering unit which forms part of the SCDEA, said they had recently been working with the police in Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Hungary.
Last year, Scotland hosted the first conference of the European Suspicious Transactions Reporting group at Loch Lomond. Scotland currently holds the presidency for the ongoing working group.
However, Mr Pearson believes going further and establishing a European hub, specialising in financial investigations, would help undermine the finances and spread of criminal gangs. The creation of such a body would have to be agreed with the Scottish Executive and Westminster.

Ulster mafia's empire of crime
Gangs drain local economy as part of worldwide network

By Jonathan McCambridge
19 June 2006

Mafia-style gangs in Northern Ireland are building international links to develop their criminal empires running rackets worth hundreds of millions of pounds, it was revealed today.

The Organised Crime Task Force (OCTF) Annual Report and Threat Assessment has exposed the disturbing levels of extortion, blackmail, drugs, tax fraud, money laundering, counterfeit operations, illegal dumping and fuel fraud in the province.

The report urges the public to be aware that there are no victimless crimes and demonstrates the successes law enforcement agencies have had in tackling the scams which deprive the local economy of millions.

Although the report does not mention the number of organised crime gangs in operation it is understood that the OCTF is compiling an elite list of 30 groups.

The report states that paramilitary groups remain heavily involved in a range of crimes but claims that the leadership of the Provisional IRA have sought to prevent their members taking part in criminal activities since their cessation of activities. However, some "senior members" are still involved in fuel and money laundering.

Loyalist groups remain involved in drugs, extortion, money lending and armed robbery.

But the report states there is increasing evidence of overseas links and involvement of people from outside Northern Ireland in crime here.

It states: "Connections have been identified as far afield as the Far East, North and South America and West Africa as well as across Europe.

"Northern Ireland criminals also have influence elsewhere. HM Revenue and Customs assess that nearly all of their investigations into fuel on mainland GB involve individuals from Northern Ireland."

The report assesses the amount of income which the Government and public and private businesses are being deprived of through criminal gangs based in and operating from Northern Ireland:

* Intellectual property crime (counterfeiting) is estimated to cost the local economy £200m a year. Goods recovered have included power tools, batteries, toys, condoms and veterinary drugs. Counterfeit cigarettes and alcohol, widely sold at local markets, are potentially lethal;

* Police seized drugs worth £7m in the last financial year. While the scale of the drug problem is not as great as the rest of the UK or Ireland there is growing indication of a rise in demand and availability of cocaine. Seizures of the killer drug have soared by 800% since 2002/2003;

* 30m of criminal assets were restrained or confiscated by police, customs or the Assets Recovery Agency;

* 35m illegal cigarettes were seized in the province by customs officials;

* Environmental crimes such as illegal dumping are worth at least £25m a year;

* Extortion generates in excess of £10m criminal profit a year;

* Fuel smuggling and legitimate cross-border shopping costs the local economy £245m a year.

Security Minister Paul Goggins said: "Organised crime creates victims across the spectrum, from shopkeepers robbed at gunpoint, to families destroyed by drugs.

"It is big business in Northern Ireland and it's our job to put it out of business.

"Make no mistake, organised crime is harmful and impacts on every man, woman and child.

"The Government through the OCTF is totally committed to relentlessly pursuing organised criminals from whatever source."

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UDA expels two Shoukri brothers
The loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association has expelled Andre and Ihab Shoukri.
The brothers are widely believed to be the leaders of the organisation in north Belfast.

There has been much speculation about their future after a bitter fall-out with the rest of the UDA leadership.

The UDA's ruling body, its 'inner council', issued a statement saying it had expelled a number of members in north Belfast, but did not name anyone.

However, loyalist sources said those expelled include the two brothers.

The move comes after allegations by other UDA leaders that the two brothers had been involved in widespread criminality.

Earlier this year, it was revealed in court that Andre Shoukri had gambled £863,000 in a Belfast bookmakers.



The organisation was at pains to point out that it was their duty, as defenders of the Protestant people, to create safer communities which are drug and crime free and where our people can live free from oppression
Davy Nicholl
Ulster Political Research Group

He is currently in jail on remand facing charges of blackmail, intimidation and money laundering.

In 2004, he was a member of a UDA delegation which met the then Secretary of State Paul Murphy.

Ihab Shoukri has denied being a member of the organisation, and earlier this month charges of UDA and UFF membership against him were dropped when a judge ruled that there was not enough evidence.

But senior loyalist and security sources say both men are leading members of the organisation.


'Did not matter'

Davy Nicholl of the Ulster Political Research Group, which gives political advice to the UDA, said the paramilitary group was looking to the future.

"There's a great onus on us to move the situation forward," he told BBC News.

"The organisation was at pains to point out that it was their duty, as defenders of the Protestant people, to create safer communities which are drug and crime free and where our people can live free from oppression."

Sinn Fein assembly member Gerry Kelly said it did not matter to nationalists who led the UDA and other loyalist organisations.

"Nationalists want to hear from the UDA and UVF that they are ending their sectarian campaign against Catholics, their racist attacks on ethnic minorities and the drug dealing and other activities they are engaged in," he said.

The SDLP's Alban Maginnis welcomed the decision by the UDA, however he said he was still cautious.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Murder plot gang get life terms
Three men convicted of plotting the execution-style shooting of a couple at their Lincolnshire seaside home have been given life sentences.
John, 55, and Joan Stirland, 51, were shot in their bungalow in August 2004.

Mr Justice Treacy ruled a 39-year-old defendant, who cannot be named, should serve at least 35 years.

Michael McNee, 21, of no fixed address, was jailed for at least 25 years and John Russell, 29, of Northcote Way, Nottingham, was jailed for 30 years.

They were all found guilty of conspiracy to murder.

The court heard the motive for the killings was revenge for a murder carried out by Mrs Stirland's son, Michael O'Brien, in Nottingham in 2003.


You, as a criminal man, are prepared to commit the ultimate act of criminal violence
Mr Justice Treacy

The judge told the three men: "These were shocking murders by any standards. They were nothing less than executions of totally innocent people.

"The Stirlands were killed in their own home for no reason other than that one of the victims was the mother of somebody you wanted to take revenge on."

Mr Justice Treacy described the unnamed 39-year-old as "a dominating leader of others".

He told the defendant: "You are a crook, a villain and a large-scale drug dealer.

"You were the leader of this criminal gang. To your gang your word was law."

At this point he began to hurl abuse at the judge and was removed from the court.

Continued investigation

Mr Justice Treacy then added: "The utterly evil nature of what you did shows that you, as a criminal man, are prepared to commit the ultimate act of criminal violence as and when it suits your purpose.

"You are prepared to do that due to a perverted desire for revenge."

Five other men were cleared of conspiracy to murder after a trial at Birmingham Crown Court.

They were Shane Bird, 39, of Carlton Hill, Nottingham; Kevin Holm, 38, of Cliff Road, Carlton; Lanelle Douglas, 20 and Andrew McKinnon, 22, both of no fixed address, and a 40-year-old defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Officers have said the investigation into the Stirlands' deaths is continuing and they believe there are more people to be brought to justice.

The couple, originally from Nottingham, were forced to flee after a gun attack on their home and moved to Trusthorpe, where they were killed eight months later.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is now investigating the communication between Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire police on the day of the killings and whether that compromised the Stirlands' safety.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/engl...ire/5132492.stm

Published: 2006/06/30 11:51:42 GMT

Man convicted of ‘Get Carter’ killing blames Kray twins

By Ian Herbert
27 June 2006

The rich pickings offered by the thriving nightclubs and gaming tables of Newcastle upon Tyne in the mid-1960s were irresistible to Michael Luvaglio and Dennis Stafford.

They were doing nicely working for one of the characters who installed fruit machines and booked cabaret acts until another employee, Angus Sibbett, started siphoning off £1,000 a week in takings. He wound up dead in the back of a Mk 10 Jaguar, his body riddled with bullets.

Mr Luvaglio, 69, and Mr Stafford, 71, were convicted of the One-Armed Bandit Murder, made famous by Ted Lewis’s book, Jack’s Return Home. In 1971 it was turned into the gangster film Get Carter, starring Michael Caine and Bryan Mosley (aka Alderman Alf Roberts in Coronation Street), who was bumped off by Caine in the film.

But though Get Carter has assigned the murder a place in history, the men convicted of it have always denied the crime, and Mr Luvaglio’s family publicly protested his innocence yesterday after he suffered a heart attack which is believed to have left him gravely ill at Westminster and Chelsea Hospital in London.

Through the family, Mr Luvaglio said he did not want to go to his grave with the crime on his name, and insisted that the Kray twins, widely believed to have failed to muscle in on the Newcastle scene, were responsible. Mr Luvaglio told his family the Krays wanted to take over Newcastle’s social club business. He also maintained that fingerprints found in Mr Sibbett’s car were neither his nor Mr Stafford’s. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) began a review of the case last year.

Although Mr Luvaglio and Mr Stafford have denied the crime, the former has made few public pronouncements over the years. A relative, Vince Landa, ran the fruit machine business and tempted him from London to work with Mr Stafford. Mr Luvaglio became a prime suspect when, at 5.15am on 5 January 1967, a miner found Mr Sibbett’s body in the Jaguar which his takings had enabled him to buy. He was arrested the next day.

The timing of the murder was an important part of the court case. Mr Luvaglio and Mr Stafford maintained they were at Newcastle’s Birdcage Club at 12.30am on the night Mr Sibbett was shot, 16 miles away. Their alibis covered them for all but 45 minutes of the night.

But detectives reckoned it would have taken only 40 minutes to kill Mr Sibbett and drive to the Birdcage, in atrocious weather. Crash marks on Mr Sibbett’s Mk 10 Jaguar corresponded to those on an E-Type Jaguar driven by Mr Stafford on the night of the murder. The men were convicted and sentenced to life.

Two appeals were turned down before both were freed in 1979 on licence. Mr Stafford has always maintained that Mr Sibbett was shot by a Scottish criminal. His licence was revoked after he breached its conditions by moving to South Africa. He returned to Britain in 1989 for a visit but was caught by a security check after booking into the same hotel as the visiting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He remained in prison until 1998.

Mr Stafford, who lives in style at Stanhope Castle in Wearside, declined to comment.

Fallon is charged in fixing probe

Monday, July 3, 2006; Posted: 2:33 p.m. EDT (18:33 GMT)
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Kieren Fallon, one of racing's most successful jockeys, has been charged with conspiracy to defraud as part of a police probe into alleged race-fixing.

Fallon, six times champion jockey and three times winner of the Epsom Derby, is one of 11 people, including two other jockeys, charged in connection with the biggest investigation of its kind ever undertaken in Britain.

Police named the other 10 as Miles Rodgers, 37, Joanne Richardson, 27, Darren Williams, 27, Darren Armitage, 41, Brian Pilkington, 70, Philip Sherkle, 39, Alan Berry, 43, Steven O'Sullivan, 35, Fergal Lynch, 28, and his brother Shaun Lynch, 36.

Williams and Lynch are both jockeys, while Rodgers is a former racing syndicate director.

In a statement, City of London police said the eight had been charged "with offences relating to allegations of fixing the outcome of horse races between December 1, 2002, and September 2, 2004, and money laundering..."

All were bailed to appear before magistrates on July 17.

Fallon arrived at a London police station straight from Ireland where he rode the colt Dylan Thomas to victory in the Irish Derby at The Curragh on Sunday.

The owners of that horse, John Magnier and Michael Tabor of the Coolmore operation, were among three men who pledged their support to Fallon in a statement in the light of the charges.

"John Magnier, Derrick Smith and Michael Tabor, for whom Kieren Fallon rides, have been assured that Mr Fallon is innocent of these charges and look forward to his opportunity to defend himself, and to the early resolution of this issue," the three said.

The charge against Fallon comes 20 months after he was first arrested. He has continued to race successfully while under investigation.

After 20 minutes, the 41-year-old left the police station on Monday morning without talking to reporters, climbed into a silver Mercedes and was driven away.

The Horseracing Regulatory Authority later issued a statement confirming Fallon, Williams and Lynch were all suspended from riding in Britain -- although this does not apply to meetings in Ireland.

In all, police have arrested 28 people over the last two years as part of their probe. The probe followed alleged irregular betting on an internet betting exchange which passed records from its tracking of betting patterns to racing's authorities.

Fallon is one of the sport's biggest names, known for his brilliant, forceful riding in a colorful career.

He shot to fame in the mid-1990s when he quit the modest north of England racing circuit and landed the plum job of stable jockey to trainer Henry Cecil at Newmarket.

He became champion jockey for the first time in 1997 and won the 1999 Epsom Derby for Cecil on Oath though the duo split soon afterward when Cecil's wife admitted having sex with a leading jockey. Fallon denied any involvement.

In 2003 he enjoyed a second victory in the Epsom Derby on Kris Kin and produced a dazzling ride on Islington to win one of the Breeders' Cup races at Santa Anita.

His third and most recent Epsom Derby triumph came on North Light in 2004.

In 1994, he was banned from racing for six months for pulling a rival jockey from his horse at the end of a race. Early in 2003, he spent 30 days in a treatment clinic after admitting an alcohol problem.

15 July 2006
MAFIA CHARGE APPEAL REJECTED
A BUSINESS MAN accused of running an Italian Mafia clan from Scotland yesterday lost his appeal against extradition.

Now former restaurant boss Antonio La Torre hopes the House of Lords will stop him being sent to Italy to face trial.

Italian police say Aberdeen-based La Torre, 50, is the "undisputed head of a criminal organisation".

He has already been convicted of a string of charges and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

It is claimed the La Torre Clan, operating around Naples, was run long-distance by La Torre.

Yesterday, the Appeal Court in Edinburgh refused his appeals against Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson's decision to extradite him.


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Amotion by his counsel, Mungo Bovey QC, seeking leave to appeal this decision to the Privy Council was also refused.


Mr Bovey then said he would appeal against the decision not to allow him to appeal.


The legal team have 28 days in which to lodge this appeal. If the Privy Council decide the case should not go before the House of Lords, La Torre will be extradited within 10 days.


La Torre, who moved to Aberdeen 20 years ago, became a British citizen in 1994 and renounced his Italian citizenship.


The married father-of three has been held in custody since 2004.


The La Torre Clan is alleged to be part of the Camorra, the Neapolitan equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia.

22 July 2006
GANG CLAN SON'S BMW TORCHED
£40k car attack follows shooting on doorstep
By Derek Alexander
A MEMBER of a notorious crime family has had his car destroyed in a firebomb attack.

Eddie Lyons jnr's motor was targeted by thugs in the latest twist in a gangland feud.

The 28-year-old survived an assassination attempt earlier this year when a gunman blasted him on his doorstep.

Now his black BMW X5 has been wrecked while parked outside the home of his girlfriend's mother in Glasgow's Milton district.

The £40,000 machine was torched in the early hours of Monday.

One worried neighbour said: "It's only a matter of time before someone is killed.


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"Things have been out of hand for a long while now and it seems to be getting worse."


Lyons jnr was shot at his luxury home in the Carrickstone area of Cumbernauld in April. His shooting came days after Ronnie Dougan, 25, was shot dead in the town.


A supergrass has also accused Lyons jnr of being part of a kidnap gang who stabbed him and tried to electrocute him. The man - who also blew the whistle on drug-dealing lawyer Angela Baillie - claimed that Lyons jnr wrote "grass" on his forehead with a black marker pen.


Lyons jnr stood trial for the attempted murder of Thomas McDonnell in 2001 but the case was found not proven. His father, Eddie Lyons snr, was also accused but had charges against him dropped.


Earlier this year, £63,000 was seized by police at the home of Lyons snr.


William Paterson, an associate of Lyons snr, claimed in court that he had made the cash from drug dealing.


He was jailed for 30 months and charges against Stephen Lyons - the brother of Lyons jnr - were dropped.


Lyons snr is the boss of Chirnsyde Community Initiative in Milton.


The community centre receives £80,000 per year in grants from Glasgow City Council.


Half of this year's cash has been withheld after a probe was ordered.


It was thought the investigation would centre on Lyons snr's alleged links \ to crime.


But campaigners were outraged when they discovered the probe would only look into the centre's finances.


Residents have raised numerous concerns with council bosses and police 1 about Lyons snr's involve-1 ment at Chirnsyde.


Meanwhile those active in I the community have been 1 terrorised - including one man who was given a mobile phone by police for extra security.

23 July 2006
DEALER IN JAIL KNIFING
By Russell Findlay

A HEROIN dealer pal of gangster Paul Ferris has slashed a prison officer.

John Lynn Jnr, 26, attacked the man with a craft knife in Castlerea Prison in the Republic of Ireland.

The warder feared he could have died. The attack left deep cuts on his face and partially severed an ear.

The Irish Prison Officers' Association want to know why the Glaswegian was in the medium security prison.

Lynn, from Easterhouse, was moved there following a near fatal attack on an inmate in a Limerick jail two years ago.

Ferris visited Lynn behind bars three years ago.

He is serving 12 years over a £1.5million heroin haul. It is believed he has been moved to a more secure jail.

30 July 2006
GANGSTER DANIEL IS BOOTED OUT OF JAIL

A MEMBER of the notorious Daniel crime clan has been kicked out of Perth Prison over fears he was dealing drugs from his cell.

Robert Daniel, 32, is believed to have smuggled drugs and mobile phones into the prison and had other inmates assaulted. He has now been transferred to Glasgow's tough Barlinnie jail.

Daniel - part of Scotland's most powerful underworld family who have made £16million from crime - was caged for eight years in December after police caught him with £300,000 worth of heroin.

A prison insider said: "The prison management were concerned that he was becoming top dog within the hall and dealing drugs.

"It is common practice to move a prisoner when he starts to exert too much influence over other inmates."

The Scottish Prison Service said: "Inmates can be moved if we suspect they are carrying out criminal activities."

The Sunday Times July 30, 2006

Mafia suspect 'to turn supergrass'
Rosaria Capacchione and Mark Macaskill
A MAFIA suspect living in Scotland has surrendered to the Italian authorities.

Michele Siciliano, a business partner in Aberdeen of Antonio La Torre — the alleged head of the La Torre crime family — has given himself up to anti-Mafia prosecutors investigating an alleged multi-million-pound money-laundering operation.

It is understood that the 39-year-old, who was a co-owner of Pavarotti’s restaurant and also ran fish and steel importing businesses in the city, intends to turn supergrass.

The La Torre family is said to be part of the Camorra, the Neapolitan version of the Sicilian Mafia.

Siciliano, who is said to have controlled the crime family’s finances in Britain and to have been its de facto boss following La Torre’s arrest in 2004, caught a flight from London earlier this month and walked into a police station in Padua, northern Italy.

His decision, which ends a 10-year extradition battle by the Italian authorities, comes after an international warrant was issued for his arrest.

Siciliano, who had also lived in Surrey, was arrested by British police in 1995 at the behest of the Italian authorities and spent six weeks in prison before appearing at an extradition hearing accused of Mafia involvement.

The attempt failed because the Italian crime of “Mafia association” is not recognised in British or Scots law.

Prosecutors claim Siciliano and La Torre — described by Italian police as the “undisputed head of a criminal organisation” — have run a lucrative criminal empire from Aberdeen for more than 20 years.

The pair are accused of amassing millions of pounds through extortion and drugs since the 1970s.

Siciliano has previously denied any wrongdoing. In 2003 he told The Sunday Times: “If I have committed any crime it is up to the local authorities to come and check it. I am open any time and they can see anything they want.”

Last month, La Torre, 49, dubbed the “Don on the Don”, lost his appeal in Edinburgh against extradition to Italy where he has already been sentenced to 13 years for extortion and racketeering. Three appeal court judges upheld two extradition orders that have been signed by Cathy Jamieson, the justice minister. He denies all charges against him.

Worsening UDA stand-off fuels fears of loyalist feud following weapons seizure

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THERE were fears of a new loyalist feud - this time within the largest paramilitary group, the UDA - after 800 loyalists staged a rally in Belfast on Saturday night.

The demonstration followed a weapons seizure linked to fresh trouble between rival factions in the UDA.

Guns, ammunition and petrol bombs were seized by police during searches aimed at defusing the situation in the north of the city.

Two men were arrested and one later charged.

The trouble has been blamed on a developing stand-off between separate elements of the UDA.

With the outlawed organisation announcing on Friday a new leadership to replace ousted north Belfast chiefs Andre and Ihab Shoukri, fears have been growing that supporters of the toppled brothers may ignite new violence.

As the stand-off continued, the UDA's inner council mobilised a big gathering in the west of the city.

A statement was read out declaring that the organisation would not allow any criminals to deter it from achieving its goal of a lasting peace for its community.

It said: "There were members who used their position to achieve personal gain and fortune, especially through drug trafficking and drug sales.

"This has resulted in those ex-loyalists attempting to protect their fiefdoms by whatever means available to them."

The UDA urged the PSNI to stop criminals operating in north Belfast but went on to claim that a series of attacks in the Ballysillan and Tigers Bay areas had been carried out.

The statement added: "The organisation will not stand by and allow its community and its members to be attacked after 35 years of conflict with the Provisional IRA and republicans.

"We have fought the IRA, the RUC and our own army. If need be, we will fight drug dealers."

1 August 2006
BRIT FIGHTS FOR LIFE AFTER DRUGS SHOOTOUT IN IBIZA
Tom Worden In Madrid
A MAN was fighting for his life last night after being shot in a gunfight between rival British drugs gangs in Ibiza.

Tourists fled in panic as the two gangs fired at least 20 rounds from their cars at 1am.

Three men were taken to hospital with bullet wounds. Eight Brits were arrested. Police believed the shootout in San Antonio was between gangs selling cocaine and ecstasy.

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The rival groups, driving a BMW X5 and a Seat Leon, exchanged fire near the Avenida Doctor Fleming, which was packed with British tourists.


One holidaymaker said: "It was mayhem, like a movie scene. Two cars were shooting at each other near to the main strip of bars by the sea.


"Everybody was screaming. I kept my head down and got out of there before police arrived."


Spanish police said: "They were shooting with no regard for tourists and passers-by."


A man had emergency surgery to remove a bullet from his chest and is in intensive care in an Ibiza hospital.


Two others were treated for superficial gunshot wounds.


It was not clear last night if the three injured were involved in the shootout or bystanders.


Town hall spokesman Joan Pantaleoni said: "Eight British men have been arrested. The details are confusing. We have no independent witnesses."


The incident is being investigated by the Civil Guard.


mirrornews@mgn.co.uk

I think it is safe to say we can expect a crackdown on drugdealing Brits. Don't these guys learn anything from their jailed and murdered predecessors.

How city gangs control Ibiza's evil drug trade

Aug 4 2006

By Tony Barrett, Liverpool Echo

The popular sun-kissed isle of Ibiza

IT IS the Mediterranean holiday island which welcomes hundreds of thousands of British holiday-makers each year.

A place where families, couples and clubbers flock to for a week or two of fun in the sun.

But Ibiza is also guarding a deep, dark secret - it has become an island which Liverpool drug dealers view as their own private turf.

A place where Liverpool gangsters can make tens of millions of pounds servicing the narcotic desires of a generation of young adults who use ecstasy and cocaine like the generation before them guzzled lager and cheap spirits.

If clubbers represent the demand then Liverpool drug dealers are more than happy to act as the supply. It is an economic arrangement built on an illegal entrepreneurial spirit and fuelled by an almost insatiable appetite for drugs.

For almost a decade Ibiza's Scouse Mafia have had it their own way, selling their wares to teenagers in the nightclub capital of Europe and brutally enforcing their dominance if anyone dared question their position of power.

But now the tide is turning. Drugs gangs from other parts of the UK and beyond have recognised just how lucrative the Ibizan market is and are looking to secure their piece of the action.

The situation has simmered for some time with the only evidence of the increased tension being relatively minor clashes between teenagers used by the rival drugs gangs to sell their substances at the island's biggest clubs.

But those tensions rose to the surface in spectacular fashion in the early hours of Monday morning when a street in downtown San Antonio became the setting for a shoot-out between Liverpool and Newcastle gangs.

Sustained bouts of gunfire rang out in the resort centre with early police investigations revealing as many as 30 shots were fired.

Liverpool man Shaun Francis Walker, 23,was one of three men shot, the bullet lodging in his spine. He remains in aserious condition in an Ibizan hospital.

Mr Walker was driving a black British registered BMW X5 which was being pursued by a Seat Leon.

Shots were exchanged between the two vehicles.

Two innocent teenage Northern Irish holidaymakers were also hit and were hospitalised.

Philip Young and Gareth Richardson return home to Belfast International Airport. Gareth, right, was one of two holidaymakers caught up in a gangsters' gun battle

A Spanish source told the ECHO: "These are young men and I am not surprised the police in Merseyside have not heard of them.

"I do not think they have made a name for themselves yet.

"The victim was targeted and that makes me think it is a message to some Liverpool gangster who would be behind these lads being in Ibiza.

"They were probably here for the summer - a lot of young people come over to sell designer drugs like co-caine and ecstasy or cannabis to the clubbers.

"The kids will trust someone with an English accent and are more likely to buy drugs from them than someone with a Spanish accent, often they think the Spanish are likely to be undercover cops.

"The guys who do this kind of selling are too low level to attract the kind of attention that ends in a shooting. So I would think these boys were apprentices for a big drugs gang, who had sent them over to Ibiza for the summer to show what they could do.

"If they had a successful time, they would be able to move up the ranks of their gang. I think the shooting was probably a message back to whoever that is."

One underworld source believes the position of the Liverpool gangs has been weakened in recent years by the arrival of organised crime gangs from Russia and Romania and now others are targeting them.

He said: "The Liverpool lads have had it all their own way for ages. The problem they've got now is they are there to be shot at.

"As soon as the Russians and Romanians arrived in Ibiza from Marbella and Majorca the scene changed.

"The Liverpool lads are still top dogs but there is a growing feeling that they are not quite as strong as they once were."

A British police source told the ECHO the Spanish authorities are losing the war on drugs in Ibiza because of a chronic lack of resources.

He said: "The customs boats that patrol the coast of the island are probably the least successful in Europe.

"They hardly ever make an arrest because they are so under-staffed and that means the drug traffickers feel confident that they can get gear into Ibiza without even being challenged.

"The cocaine is taken to the Spanish peninsula on yachts and merchant vessels from countries in South America like Colombia and Venezuela and is then re-routed to the island on smaller boats.

"A lot of this trafficking is directed by Liverpool gangsters living in the Costas who have teamed up with Spanish crime gangs. Some of them pay for the cocaine with ecstasy.

"They then use British teenagers to sell the drugs on the streets.

"Not enough is being done to stop them. The Spanish authorities did introduce CCTV on Ibiza in a bid to crackdown on drug dealing but shortly after the cameras were installed an investigation revealed hardly any of them were working.

"If you also consider the fact that the UK is the highest consumer of ecstasy in the world and tens of thousands of young people from this country holiday in Ibiza every year then you've got the perfect equation for the dealers."

A senior Liverpool underworld figure says such laxity only serves to encourage drug dealers from this part of the world to ply their trade in Ibiza.

"Every drug dealer operating in this city knows there's a good chance of being caught and going to jail for a long time.

"But in places like Ibiza you just don't expect to be caught. It used to be that dealers from up here would go to places in this country like Bournemouth, Great Yarmouth and Torquay - places where they knew there would be plenty of holiday-makers looking for a good time and where the police were not as strong as they are up here.

"But then the dance scene began in Ibiza and loads of them headed off there. It's perfect for them - there's loads of money to be made and not much chance of being caught."

This does not mean there is no risk, however. British police forces, including Merseyside, regularly liaise with their Spanish counterparts through Interpol and the recently formed Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Improved intelligence has helped thwartanumber of recent attempts to bring drugs into Ibiza.

On a number of occasions, Ibizan police have recovered floating packages of drugs which had been thrown away by drug smugglers fleeing police and customs officers.

The problem is, far too much is still getting through and that is at the root of the island's problems.

Drug baron's fall to a lonely bedsit

Clifford Norris has never spoken publicly about the case in which his son was a prime suspect - the Stephen Lawrence murder. Now he breaks his silence on allegations of police corruption and tells of his own rapid descent from the gangland elite to jail and a life on benefits

Mark Townsend, crime correspondent
Sunday August 6, 2006
Observer

No one stopped to stare at the diminutive figure shuffling along Upper Denmark Road last week. Clifford Norris, one of the most notorious gangsters in Britain, now lives in a pokey bedsit in one of the rougher parts of Ashford, Kent, and no longer warrants a second look.

A slim, almost fragile man of no more than 5ft 7in, it is hard to believe this was the ruthless criminal that masterminded a multimillion-pound drugs empire of such corruptive influence that it was said he could bend the very tenets of justice itself.

The reputation of Norris remains undimmed by time: a man of intrigue mythologised for an unerring knack of disappearing into thin air whenever the heat was on. Until now, he has never spoken to the media.

Last week, however, the 47-year-old gave The Observer a first account of his rapid rise and even steeper fall from drugs baron to a member of the unemployed. He also answered fresh allegations that he corrupted the investigation into Britain's most notorious racist murder, that of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

'There was a time when I had it all - the flash house, the cars, the business,' he said. 'Things grew pretty quickly, but they went quickly too.'

At the age of 30 Norris controlled much of south London's drugs trade, lording it over rivals with a mock-Tudor home and fast cars as he presided over scores of criminal associates. Little remains of his materialistic, moneyed past. Norris now lives in a mud-coloured hostel on a jobseeker's allowance of £56.20 a week. Housing benefit pays for a single room above a DIY store.

Norris has nothing. There is no woman in his life and visits from friends and family are notable only for their rarity. The ambling figure in Upper Denmark Street is proof, perhaps, that crime does not pay. Norris admits he made mistakes, that his drugs empire was 'out of control'. Crucially, too, he also reveals that police corruption did exist in south London during the period Stephen was murdered, allegedly with the involvement of his eldest son, David, who remains a prime suspect in the case.

Norris will spend today drinking tea and watching television alone in his small room. As he does every day. At some point he may choose to break the routine by popping out to the Wheatsheaf off-licence - six cans of Stella Artois for £6.49 - and sipping them on the bench opposite Ashford's branch of the UK Independence Party. Luxury for Norris these days extends to a game of pool inside The Locomotive pub. Tomorrow he'll contemplate the same routine. Just as he did yesterday. Those that know him suggest his behaviour betrays a man who remains 'institutionalised' from a seven-year stretch in jail.

Most people had forgotten about Norris when he was finally released from Maidstone prison in January 2001 after serving his sentence for intent to supply drugs and possessing a submachine-gun. Norris gravitated to nearby Ashford and effectively disappeared. Rumours gradually surfaced that the former criminal had reunited with his former associates; somewhere, somehow, Norris was back pulling the strings.

The truth turns out to be more prosaic. Clifford attempted to integrate himself into society, securing work as the supervisor of an Ashford cleaning firm until he was made redundant earlier this year. 'I'm still finding my feet. Little by little I'm getting there, and right now I'm looking for work, but it can be difficult because of who I am.'

Norris will spend this week waiting for the results of two job applications; both menial part-time positions. Anything will do, he says. 'It's tough starting out again. To some people you'll always be the lowest of the low.'

There was a time when people did whatever he asked. Towards the end of the Eighties, Norris presided over a nexus of south-east London criminals, a number of whom were connected to the 1983 Brinks Mat gold bullion robbery. Some, like Kenneth Noye, now in prison for a road-rage murder, were regarded as having links with corrupt police officers, allegations that would prompt the current head of Scotland Yard, Sir Ian Blair, to launch one of the force's largest corruption inquiries shortly after Stephen's death.

How deep the tentacles of Norris and his associates stretched into the ranks of the Metropolitan Police remains unclear, but almost overnight the mastermind would find his power base crumbling. By the time of his release, he had been abandoned by even his most trusted lieutenants.

'All my businesses, all my contacts, all my business associates had fallen flat. That was that, it was all gone.' Norris, whose silvery hair and browning teeth suggest a man older than his years, learnt not to mourn the passing of his criminal empire. 'It was not that exciting, to be honest, having to look over your shoulder can wear you down,' he said, before looking towards the outline of Ashford's gleaming international rail station, the fast track to mainland Europe where Norris once negotiated his huge cannabis deals. The other direction would take Norris back to the streets of Deptford and then Eltham in south-east London, where a plaque near a bus stop on Well Hall Road marks the spot where Stephen was murdered one spring night in 1993.

Norris, like his son, has struggled to distance himself from a case that has become one of the defining incidents of Nineties Britain. Ten days ago allegations emerged that the investigation into the 18-year-old A-level student's murder was deliberately botched because an officer investigating the murder was on Norris's payroll. It was a well-versed concern. The 'Norris factor' emerges at key points in Sir William Macpherson's 1999 report into the murder of Lawrence. Macpherson's report deemed Norris an 'evil influence' whose 'very damaging' role prevented witnesses from coming forward.

Claims that he 'fixed' an earlier trial in which his son David was acquitted of a stabbing are also noted in the report. His influence may have extended further. The one key witness that did come forward, Duwayne Brooks, was assigned a police escort during the private prosecution of three Lawrence suspects at the Old Bailey in 1996. That escort, Detective Sergeant David Coles, was well-known to Norris. Surveillance officers recorded the detective meeting the criminal at least three times at the Tiger's Head pub in Chislehurst, Kent. Packages were recorded being exchanged. Coles has explained that he was grooming Norris as an informant.

Recently a former corrupt policeman turned informant, Neil Putnam, alleged that Det Sgt John Davidson, at the heart of the bungled Scotland Yard investigation, deliberately sabotaged the murder hunt after allegedly receiving money from Norris. Davidson denies the claims.

Norris claims he did not have a corrupt relationship with Coles, never met Davidson, and that the first he knew of Putnam was when he heard details of the latest allegations against him, broadcast in a BBC documentary.

'I never became involved with underhand dealings or giving money to coppers. Never did I give the police any money or a retainer to get them on the payroll. I don't know any bent coppers.' Norris admits, however, that he was aware of corruption between officers and other criminals in the period around Stephen's murder, although he is not in the business of naming names.

'I was not involved, but there was corruption going on with police and other heavier gangs,' he said. By the time his son was implicated in Stephen's murder, Norris's power base in south-east London was so extensive that he felt he could operate almost with impunity. 'We were doing so well,' he said, 'there was never any reason for me to give money to the police.'

Born in 1958 in St Alfeges Hospital, Greenwich, and raised in nearby Deptford, Norris had a reputation as a violent tearaway by the time he was a teenager. Yet along with his elder brother, Alexander, Norris seemed destined for little more than a career as a small-time crook. The emergence of the drugs trade changed everything. Suddenly every petty villain could enter the big time.

Norris first came to the attention of the police when he was 25, after officers found a safety deposit box belonging to him stuffed with £17,000. Norris denied all knowledge, but it was clear acquiring cash was no problem. By the age of 27 the man from a south London working-class family was practically a millionaire. In 1987 police records named Norris as being involved in 'high-level drug activity'. And in the following spring, he and his wife, Teresa 'Tracey' Norris, procured a £600,000 mock-Tudor property at 7 Berryfield Close in Chislehurst - a private cul-de-sac with electronic gates and wrought-iron gates.

His rapid accumulation of wealth would not have gone unnoticed. Several years earlier the couple had scrimped together to buy a modest home for £43,000. Norris's thirst for fast cars blossomed in tandem with his wealth. He remembers buying a Porsche 911 with white leather trim from a Billingshurst dealer, using cash stuffed in a plastic carrier bag. 'You could get this and that; cars, a decent house, the lot. It was a good lifestyle,' he said.

By this stage, though, his criminal network had almost assumed a life of its own. Norris was losing control. 'You'd meet people who were unemployed, people with criminal records, unethical people, and it just grows from there. The illegal businesses just kept on getting bigger and bigger.'

His network of contacts continued to widen, links were strengthened with underworld figures such as Noye. 'I was never into that [violence], there were much heavier people around than myself, much more serious operators.'

Norris believes that the drug entrepreneurs of the Eighties were so successful they created a demand that has not subsided since. 'Over the years business just sort of blew up, but when it popped it never really came down [to what it was before].'

Norris was among the first criminals to create a network of dealers across Europe. Throughout 1987 and 1988 he was working extensively with Dutch suppliers. Customs covertly photographed him in Geneva. Flush with the riches he was making, Norris had got slack. On 21 June, 1988, customs officials intercepted a quarter of a tonne of cannabis in Barking and arrested criminal associates of Norris. Less than 12 months later a 24-year-old man was shot in the chest outside a Deptford pub. Norris's elder brother was arrested in connection with the shooting and sentenced to nine years for cannabis smuggling.

Aware that the net was closing, Norris went on the run. Teresa would unwittingly betray him in August 1994 when police followed her to a holiday cottage in East Sussex. Inside, next to a set of golf clubs, officers found a silenced Ingram submachine-gun. After five years in hiding, they had found their man. Norris was sentenced to nine and a half years for drugs and firearm offences.

'I got arrested over money, to be honest. It was fair game, there was never any complaints from me. I just served my sentence.' Yet questions soon arose. How did a professional gangster manage to evade detection for so long? Speculation grew that Norris did, in fact, have officers on the payroll. He will always deny it.

Memories of the six-bedroom Chislehurst home seem almost surreal these days. Norris now inhabits a sparse single room, barely 10ft by 10ft. Those who knew Norris in prison describe a contemplative character who completed several NVQs while there but who has struggled to adjust to life outside. One former inmate told The Observer: 'Cliff's room is tiny and laid out like a prison cell. The toilet roll, bed and television are exactly where you'd find it inside. He's proper institutionalised.'

It was during his seven years in jail that Norris lost everything. Customs ordered him to hand over £386,000 in drugs profits and later seized 7 Berryfield Close, claiming that the property was bought with the proceeds of crime. Teresa also left him. They have not spoken since he settled in Ashford. 'But it was amicable, we always got on. I suppose we just drifted apart,' he said.

Rarely does he hear from his son David. 'He's always having to change his mobile phone because of the stick he gets over the Lawrence case. He dreamt of becoming a plumber, but he lost his apprenticeship and then got sacked from two jobs over the case. It's been very difficult for him to get employment.

'But I have always thought he was innocent, otherwise he would have been convicted, wouldn't he?' Accusations that his family are racist are rejected with a firm shake of the head. He has no explanation as to why in 2002 David swerved a car at a black off-duty police officer and called him 'nigger' close to where Stephen was murdered.

The police, meanwhile, are pursuing more than 60 potential new leads following the BBC documentary, including, possibly, fresh witnesses to the murder of Stephen that could yet implicate Norris's son. Norris, though, claims he just longs for a quiet life and the hope that one of Ashford's 4,550 employers grants him another chance. 'I just want to get on, find a job and live normally. Everyone deserves a chance, don't they?'

Career in crime

1958: Born in Greenwich.
1976: Wife Teresa gives birth to David, one of the Stephen Lawrence suspects.
1981: Norris and family move into £43,000 home in New Cross, south-east London.
1988: Family move to mansion in Chislehurst worth £600,000.
1993: David appears in court over alleged knife attack. A month later he becomes suspect in murder of Stephen Lawrence.
1994: Norris arrested over firearm and drugs charges. Sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in jail. Serves seven years.
1999: Sir William Macpherson names Norris as 'evil influence' on Lawrence murder inquiry.
2002: Eldest son David jailed for racism after swerving car at a black man.
2006: Norris accused of corrupting officers in Lawrence murder inquiry.

British body count soars as the Costa killers turn up the heat
Spanish police see the recent drug gang shootings as a worrying sign of change in the expat community

Giles Tremlett in Marbella
Monday August 7, 2006
Guardian

It was a busy Friday evening at The Point, a bar in the southern Spanish resort of Marbella, as the mainly British clientele enjoyed the warm night air on a terrace overlooking a palm tree lined golf course.

Among the drinkers was a regular known as Gerry, a popular 43-year-old Londoner who had been living around the British-dominated neighbourhood of Nueva Andalucía for some years.

In the few seconds it takes to pump half a dozen bullets into someone from point-blank range, the calm of an idyllic Mediterranean evening was shattered. "There were several shots and everybody just hit the ground," said one person who was in The Point that night.

By the time people had picked themselves up off the floor or begun to run, a blood-spattered, bullet-ridden Gerry was either dead or close to dead. An ambulance crew certified his death at the scene.

Speculation immediately started that the increasingly deadly battles being fought by British drug gangs in Spain had erupted among the bougainvillea-clad villas and white-painted, low-rise apartment blocks of Nueva Andalucía.

"They say it was a gangland execution," said Romualdo Velasco, a local shop-owner whose apartment overlooks The Point. "The British keep themselves to themselves, so it is hard to know."

There was no doubt that the gunman, or gunmen, wanted Gerry dead. He had taken at least five bullets.

A rumour doing the rounds of the Costa del Sol's British pubs in the wake of the shooting was that Gerry's wife and children may have witnessed the killing. Other reports spoke of three men who were either drinking with him or who appeared at his table.

Gerry's popularity can be measured by the two dozen floral tributes wilting in the sunshine outside The Point. Cards on them describe him as "a great mate", "a dear friend" and someone "who will never be forgotten" or is "constanly [sic] in our thoughts". They are signed by people like "Little John", "Biff and Family" and numerous British couples or families.

Spanish police, who carted the corpses of four executed British and Irish crooks off to morgues in July alone, are keeping tight-lipped. But they obviously fear the worst. Gerry's real name, it has turned out, was William Moy. "He was already known to us," Commissar Valentín Bahut, head of the police's organised crime unit in nearby Málaga, told the Guardian. "We had arrested him in 2000."

With a local judge ordering that the investigation be kept secret, Commissar Bahut could not talk in detail about the case. But he confirmed there was growing concern about British and Irish bodies piling up in Spanish morgues.

For the police, used to the presence of British crooks in a place that gained its Costa del Crime nickname decades ago, the deaths are a worrying sign of change. "It used to be that the British fought in other ways," he explained. "It was the French or Italians who killed one another. But as of a few years ago we have noticed the British are getting violent in a way that they were not before," he added. "Now they have - and use - firearms."

That concern has only increased following the shooting of a suspected drug dealer in Ibiza last week after a shoot-out between British gangs. Police suspect the victim, who was driving a 4x4 black BMW X5, was the target of an attempted hit by a rival gang supplying clubbers with ecstasy and other drugs. He is recovering in the intensive care unit of a local hospital.

Among those to have died in the apparent spate of gangland shootings were the Dublin gangsters Shane Coates, 31, and Stephen Sugg, 27, as well as the colourful British playboy and drug runner, Colin Nobes, 47. The bodies of Coates and Sugg were found last month at the bottom of a two-metre pit covered with cement. Nobes's corpse was discovered under a motorway bridge.

Arrests in all three cases have been of other British and Irish people settled in Spain or in the nearby Algarve region of southern Portugal, which is becoming increasingly popular for traffickers beginning to feel the heat in Spain.

Police, meanwhile, are seeking the corpse of a third Irish gangster, Sean Dunne, whose body may have been cemented into a Spanish villa's foundations.

Last year's haul of deaths included those of timeshare operators Billy and Flo Robinson in Tenerife and the startling discovery of a corpse being kept in a Portuguese freezer by Irish gangsters. Mrs Robinson, 55, was found in a pool of blood beside her Mercedes near the family's £1m luxury villa. Mr Robinson, 58, was on the back seat of his Porsche Cayenne a few kilometres away.

British crooks are mainly drug traffickers, involved in the hashish trade from Morocco, or timeshare operators, Commissar Bahut said. British bars, estate agencies and restaurants are being used to launder profits, he added.

Among the reasons for increased violence, he said, was the arrival of Northern Irish gangsters who had previously been involved in sectarian violence.

Britain's decision to concentrate policing on Class A drugs had helped as it allowed gangs to flourish. "Drug gangs always generate other types of crimes among themselves, especially robbery, kidnapping and murder," Commissar Bahut said. "The British have now realised that you have to keep watching them."

Several British police officers are based in this area semi-permanently. But it is not an easy community to police. The registered, permanent population of Britons in Spain grew to 274,00 last year. Authorities think up to three times as many spend part of the year in Spain. Some estimates talk of 300,000 Britons living for parts of the year on the Costa del Sol alone. Millions of tourists add further cover.

"It is very difficult for us to investigate because they stick together in their bars and places where Spanish police officers stand out," said Commissar Bahut.

The Point is not, however, one of those joints that are known haunts for British crooks, and it was clear yesterday that, whatever the motives for William Moy's killing, he was going to be missed. Nowhere was this more apparent than on one card on a bunch of flowers outside the bar. "I will always love you my Baby, forever and ever," it read. "And I will be with you one day my SON. Love MUMMY."

Violent history

Spain gained its Costa del Crime reputation after an extradition treaty with Britain collapsed in 1978. A new treaty was not drawn up until 1985. Celebrity crooks like Ronnie Knight and others involved in robberies like the £26m Brinks Mat gold bullion heist fled to Spain. They were careful never to upset local police.

Even after the treaty was sorted out, the growing expat population continued to provide camouflage. Well-known crooks such as Clifford Saxe set up business in Spain, trading hashish from Morocco. Others, like fraudster John Palmer, exploited the timeshare trade. Kenneth Noye, who helped launder the Brinks Mat gold, came in 1996 after murdering Simon Cameron.

He was arrested two years later near Cádiz. Violence among British crooks emerged in 1990 when Great Train robber Charlie Wilson was shot dead in his Marbella villa. Two killings in 2002, of Irish gangster Michael McGuinness and Briton Scott Bradfield, showed the escalation in gang violence. McGuinness was found in the boot of a car in Málaga. Bradfield's body appeared in two trunks near Torremolinos.

Gang violence erupts as rave craze returns
With the rebirth of dance culture, hard drugs are openly for sale on the streets of Ibiza. Tonight, 40,000 ecstasy tablets will be bought on the island. Now the brutality that underpins the trade is boiling over, and the party paradise is turning into a nightmare world of contract killings

Mark Townsend in San Antonio
Sunday August 20, 2006
Observer

She was gone for five minutes. Scoring drugs on the waterfront of San Antonio rarely takes long. Rachel, 23, from Leeds, returned clutching three film-wrapped balls of cocaine and half-a-dozen ecstasy tablets. Her group sidled off to the lavatories of a beach bar in pairs. Like thousands of others, they had come to Ibiza to take drugs and dance all night in one of the many superclubs, then sleep off their hangovers on the beach during the day. And they were not disappointed: their holiday destination is the epicentre of the biggest captive market for cocaine and ecstasy dealers in the world.

Away from the laughter of the women from West Yorkshire, a darker story emerges. It involves a spate of contract killings, some of Britain's most wanted criminals and an illegal trade that links San Antonio to drug syndicates in most major UK cities.

More murders are expected to follow as drugs barons battle for supremacy. The recent shooting of two innocent holidaymakers caught in the crossfire of a gunfight among British gangs just yards from where Rachel bought her night's stash is evidence of escalating tension among the British criminals.

First reports that Ibiza's club scene was experiencing its busiest season of the last few years reached suppliers acting for the leading drug syndicates last month. The response was immediate. Scores of dealers are thought to have been sent from the Costa del Sol and Britain to Ibiza. Gangs from Liverpool, Manchester, London and Birmingham are all thought to be operating in the port town, according to the latest intelligence from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and Interpol.

A resurgence in the popularity of dance music and the rave culture that has seen nearly all of Ibiza's superclubs, such as Space and Pacha, break records for visitor numbers seems certain to continue for the rest of the summer. The music magazine Mixmag claims that, after years in the shadows, dance music is back to its high popularity level of the mid-Nineties. Celebrities have been keen to join the party. Budding DJ Peaches Geldof, 17, performed in Ibiza last week alongside Pete Doherty and Noel Gallagher. Mick Jagger's daughter Jade recently held a spectacular party there.

At a time when the number of holidaymakers visiting rivals such as Ayia Napa in Cyprus is down, British travel firms sent 427,000 Britons to Ibiza last month; early indications suggest the single biggest increase is among groups of young women such as Rachel and friends.

Police believe hundreds of kilos of cocaine and hundreds of thousands of ecstasy tablets have been successfully dispatched to the 12-mile strip of sand and rock in the Mediterranean.

More British undercover officers will be deployed to the island this week. A cache of weapons belonging to a UK gang was uncovered last week in a villa above San Antonio, but intelligence suggests that other guns have already taken their place. Tomorrow an estimated 40,000 ecstasy pills will be sold in Ibiza, the same as last night and the night before.

Juan Pantalioni sighed deeply and conceded that drugs were destroying his town. From his office window, the head of San Antonio police nodded at the rows of luxury yachts bobbing in the marina below and the empty berth where the Joe Ann Moore arrived last month.

Ostensibly, the British-registered vessel had been hired to ferry champagne-quaffing VIPs around the Mediterranean. Pantalioni's men would, however, find an altogether different cargo below its decks. Wedged inside two secret compartments was 717 kilos (1,581lb) of cocaine. A British gang had attempted to bring the drug to the heart of San Antonio's rave scene.

The contents of the Joe Ann Moore were found barely 100 metres from San Antonio's largest clubs. Days later, a series of homes in Liverpool were raided in connection with the discovery.

A week before the San Antonio shootings, intelligence confirmed that British-based drugs gangs were gearing up to cash in on Ibiza's record season: August would be massive. Elsewhere, however, police had also deduced that this summer might be the one when gangland violence finally erupted in the centre of Europe's summer clubbing capital.

Little more than 220 miles across the Mediterranean, Spanish police had noted a bloody month among the competing British drug barons who had settled on the Costa del Sol. At least four British and Irish drug dealers were murdered during July. The corpses of Shane Coates, 31, and Stephen Sugg, 26, both from Dublin, were hauled from a concrete grave near Malaga. Each had been shot twice in the mouth from point-blank range. Within days the body of the eccentric British playboy and drug runner Colin Nobes, 47, was discovered under a motorway bridge near Denia.

The killing continued. Londoner William Moy, 43, was shot five times as he sat in a busy cafe with his family. Other men just disappeared on the dusty roads that wind through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The body of at least one other drug dealer is believed to have been buried under cement in a Spanish villa's foundations.

Moy's death, which characterises the so-called settling of accounts or grudges between gangs, proved the final straw for the Spanish authorities. Extra British officers were drafted to what the locals call the Costa Nostra as the foreign drug syndicates began increasing orders to satisfy the huge market in the Balearics.

Finding those responsible for disseminating drugs in San Antonio is simple. The dealers surface at dusk, lining up along the palm-lined Passeig Maritim close to the world-famous clubs such as Manumission and Eden. At least a dozen work the crowded promenade; spotters at either end watch for police.

The deals are far from surreptitious, with the pastilleros - pill pushers - admitting they operate with a degree of impunity. One Senegalese dealer, who said he worked 'to supply the British', claimed the risk of getting caught was negligible. 'There are no police here, it is safe.' Similarly, he did not seem fazed by the crowds milling around him. 'We can do business here. It is no problem for you.'

Ecstasy cost €10 (£6.81) a pill, and about seven grams (a quarter of an ounce) of hashish was double that. Cocaine was €50 per gram, and was bound in layers of wrapping film which the Senegalese dealer admitted allowed him to swallow the drugs in case of emergency.

He operated opposite the superclub, Eden. This, he claimed, was British dealing turf. It was also the stretch where a Liverpool drugs gang recently opened fire on Moroccan rivals, injuring two teenagers from Northern Ireland who stumbled between the two sides. One was struck in the chest; the other remains in hospital after an operation to remove a bullet from his jaw. Doctors said he would have died instantly had it been a fraction higher.

None of the dealers The Observer spoke to claimed to know the gunmen. Nor did they reveal who supplied the drugs they peddled. These are the foot soldiers of the criminal empires that supply Ibiza's partygoers with their narcotics, and they are never told which gang mastermind is behind their employment.

However, Soca officers confirmed last week that they have intensified their scrutiny of the links between Ibiza and the Costa del Sol, from where some of Britain's most wanted drug barons run their empires. Co-operation with Spain's Special Central Unit for Locating Fugitives (UCLF) has recently been stepped up. At least six suspected major British criminals have been arrested in the province of Malaga, including Brian Wright, who is alleged to have smuggled £300m of cocaine into Britain.

Among those understood to be wanted in connection with San Antonio's drug supply is Mickey Green, 62, known as the Pimpernel. He is one of the most senior figures in Britain's underworld, and has been on the run for 20 years. Green was recently linked to a £150m cocaine-smuggling syndicate and has close connections with the Adams family, the London gangsters. Pat Adams, the eldest of the brothers, is understood to be in hiding in Andalucia, while the body of one dealer known to have links to the notorious north London family has been discovered butchered and stuffed into two trunks near Torremolinos.

Another British dealer suspected of supplying Ibiza is Mark Murray, the man in charge of dealing at the Essex club where the pill that killed Leah Betts was bought. Leah died at her 18th birthday party in 1995.

Up to 39 British-organised crime syndicates on the Costa del Sol have been identified as being involved in major drugs supply. A 26-year-old British dealer was recently arrested near Marbella with false passports, eight mobile phones and a British-registered Mitsubishi 4x4. Another British gang tried to smuggle 50 kilos of cocaine in a liquid paste inside shampoo bottles using couriers throughout Britain and in Ibiza.

But it is the marked increase in violence that has most perturbed police.

The latest Interpol intelligence confirms the arrival of armed British gangs liaising with their Spanish counterparts to import cocaine from Colombia and MDMA, the basic chemical ingredient of ecstasy, from the drug factories of the Netherlands, to Ibiza.

Less reliant on the traditional supply of hashish from Morocco, the acquisition of firearms characterises this new breed of dealer. The Liverpool syndicate at the centre of the continuing shooting investigation is reported to have issued death threats to rivals. Officers know that under the modern code of organised crime any violent opportunity that could pay is rarely spurned.

Attention will shift again this week to the white-walled villas dotted high above the bustling streets of San Antonio. Tucked among the bushes of wild thyme thrumming with cicadas are the £1,000-a-week properties rented by the drug gangs' middlemen.

Thirteen people have been arrested so far following the shooting, 12 of them British. More are expected to follow. A rifle, ammunition, baseball bats and machetes have been found in the so-called 'pills in the hills' investigation along with a black, bullet-riddled BMW, whose British driver remains under armed guard in San Antonio's hospital with gunshot wounds to his back.

Some believe the investigation has come too late. For years, dealers have exploited a lack of customs officials monitoring the ports of Ibiza town, the island capital, and San Antonio. British police have complained of a lack of intelligence-led policing.

CCTV cameras introduced recently to catch dealers have succeeded only in moving them. 'The problem is they have just moved the dealers away from the cameras, onto quieter streets where there are fewer clients and less money to make,' said Pantalioni, the police chief.

He does not know the number of arrests for drugs offences in his area this summer, nor where the dealers who operate in San Antonio are from. He does not even know whether British undercover police are patrolling his town.

Officials from Soca admit they are concentrating on monitoring 'major faces' and are content to ignore British drug users. 'It's recreational use in Ibiza. The question is how harmful is an individual's consumption to the interests of the UK? Not very,' said one source.

The failure to eradicate the huge import of drugs to such a small island has fuelled conspiracy theories that the trade has been allowed to flourish. The economy of Ibiza is heavily dependent on a clubbing scene - its unemployment rate remains well below the Spanish average - which has flourished partly thanks to the island's liberal attitude to drugs. Certainly the purity of the drugs consumed in Ibiza seems to be remarkably consistent; the island has yet to report a single fatality from ecstasy or cocaine use.

Rachel is among a generation that believes drugs are safer than alcohol. 'We're here to dance, have a laugh,' she said. 'Is that a crime?'

Ulster's mafia Don set for Italian cell

By Alan Murray

20 August 2006
Mafia godfather Luigi Marotta is on his way out of Ulster.

But the international crook - dubbed "Teflon Don" - may just be swapping his jail cell here for one in Italy.

Marotta (60), who was jailed for conspiring to defraud the Irish Cream Liquer company of £1.4m in 2000 was due to be released from Maghaberry Prison on Thursday.

But a warrant from the Immigration Department in London instructed the Prison Service to detain him until he was served with a deportation order.

And there is speculation that when he is flown to London this week Marotta will be served with a warrant seeking his extradition to his native Italy to face new criminal charges.

Marotta beat a £19m VAT fraud rap in England before he came to Northern Ireland in 1996 to begin a fraud scam against the St Brendan's Cream Liquer company.

The Mafia godfather forged signatures on stolen blank cheques for large sums made out to his computer company.

Before detectives attached to the RUC's Economic Crime Bureau nabbed Marotta, the Waterside branch of the Ulster Bank paid out £400,000 on one of the forged cheques.

Another Ulster Bank branch in Derry at Clooney Terrace also paid out on 16 stolen cheques.

Marotta was arrested in England and brought to the City of Derry Airport in 1998 flanked by two detectives and appeared on fraud charges at Limavady Court.

Detectives visited Monte Carlo and Verona in Italy in their investigation into Marotta's crime activities.

The Mafia organiser was released on half a million pounds bail and was convicted at his third trial after earlier trials collapsed because of jury tampering and a hung jury.

Three members of his gang pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges but the brazen Marotta tried to escape conviction to the end.

Said one detective: "He couldn't believe it when the jury here convicted him. He beat the rap in England and thought he would do it here, but he was wrong.

"This guy is a major mafia player in world terms.

"He has a network of criminals working for him around the world and make no mistake about it he is the real thing, he is Italian Mafia."

The Prison Service refused to comment on Marotta's future except to confirm that it has received a "warrant" from the Immigration Department of the Home Office and its awaiting further instructions from London.

The Home Office would only confirm that it had sent a warrant to the Northern Ireland Prison Service in connection with Marotta.

Security sources say the Italian authorities have kept an eye on Marotta since he was jailed here and may attempt to bring charges against him in Rome.

In May 2001, Marotta fled Ulster while on compassionate leave to visit his sick three-year-old son in Birmingham.

He was arrested in Paris 18 months later and extradited to Northern Ireland to serve out his sentence.

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