A Birmingham drugs gang have been convicted of conspiring to smuggle up to £10 million of heroin into the UK from Pakistan. The criminals had hid the drugs inside industrial machinery shipped from Lahore, but were arrested following an investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
Eight men will be sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court next Friday after being convicted of conspiracy to import heroin.
A court heard Ameran Zeb Khan, 38, Mohammed Ali, 36, and Sajid Hussain, 32, had organised two container shipments from Lahore, via Karachi, to the London Gateway Port in February and July last year.
Border Force officers searched the July shipment, cutting open the lathes to find 165kg of powdered heroin. NCA and BF officers reassembled the equipment and sent the container on to its delivery address at an industrial unit in Sandwell.
Omar Isa, 36 and Imran Arif, 35, took delivery of the lathes, unaware NCA officers were filming them and recording their conversations.
Other key players in the group were Mohammed Ashaf Khan, 49, who handled logistics while Rajesh Patel, 52, used his business to provide apparently legitimate paperwork for the shipments.
Zulfgar Munsaf, 38, who pleaded guilty before the trial, passed on the bosses’ wishes to the ground troops. Ameran Zeb Khan was already known to the NCA as a subject of a civil recovery and tax investigation.
The NCA said the seized heroin, which the group planned to sell on in bulk, had a purity of 58 per cent and was worth £5 million uncut. It is believed a similar quantity of heroin was contained in an earlier shipment, meaning the conspiracy could have earned the group up to £10 million.
Convicted of conspiracy to import heroin: Ameran Zeb Khan, 38; Mohammed Ali, 37; Sajid Hussain, 32; Omar Isa, 35; Imran Arif, 35; Mohammed Ashaf Khan, 49; Zulfgar Munsaf, 38; Rajesh Patel, 52
