LOADED GUN FOUND AFTER RAM-RAID AT DRUGS FACTORY
POLICE DISCOVERY AS THEY INVESTIGATED ATTACK BY RIVAL GANG
POLICE found a loaded shotgun when they descended on a cannabis factory.
Officers were alerted after a rival gang ram-raided the Spinney Hills operation.
Two “gardeners” were arrested, with the gun found under the bed of 24-year-old Orland Ali, pictured.
A CRIMINAL gang tried to rob rival cannabis growers by ramraiding a building containing 550 illegal plants.
The commotion at the former shisha cafe bar in Rolleston Street, Spinney Hills, alerted police, who recovered a loaded double-barrelled shotgun at the scene.
Two of the cannabis gardeners, Orland Ali, 24, and Xhelai Islami, 45, were arrested as they tried to flee the scene in the early hours of Sunday, January 31.
Ali had a shotgun cartridge in his pocket, Leicester Crown Court was told, and his DNA was detected on two similar cartridges loaded in an Italian-made Fausti Stefano shotgun recovered from under his bed. Jonathan Cox, prosecuting, said Ali’s access to firearms was “flagrantly” illustrated on his mobile phone, in photos of him and an unknown male in a car, both holding 9mm pistols that were never recovered.
Video footage also showed him at a party when a gun was cocked and fired into the air.
The prosecutor said that the rival group who attempted to steal the cannabis crop from the threefloor building in Rolleston Street had forcefully rammed the front shutters with a van, before making off empty-handed.
When the police arrived there were cannabis, soil and vehicle parts strewn all over the pavement. Mr Cox said: “The loaded shotgun was capable of firing – and this was in the heart of Spinney Hills.
“We say it was held for protection, as and when necessary.”
The prosecutor said lucrative cannabis farms were sometimes targeted by rivals wanting to steal crops and the growers took measures to protect their businesses, which, he said, was akin to “money growing on plants”.
The Rolleston Street premises was rented out, in June last year, to an unknown tenant purporting to be a Romanian national, using fake documentation.
There was evidence of at least one previous crop.
The defendants, both Albanian
nationals with no previous convictions, admitted cannabis production.
Ali further admitted possessing a shotgun without a firearms certificate.
Sentencing, Judge Keith Raynor said the crop, in various stages of maturity on three floors, had a potential yield of 30 kilograms and was being operated by “a highly organised criminal group”.
He said: “The set up was attractive to other criminals who became aware of its existence and they tried to ram-raid it.
“It was a sophisticated operation with foil installed around the property, lighting, fans and a large wall of electric sockets, transformers, multiple bottles of plant food and large extraction pipes fitted with carbon filters to stop the smell getting out.”
The judge said other footage on
Ali’s phone showed men armed with machetes attacking another cannabis operation.
He told Ali: “You were managing the grow in Rolleston Street and had an operational role in a chain and were in direct contact with those above, and (you) hoped to have financial advantage from this work.”
Judge Raynor told Islami he accepted his role was as a gardener, but on an industrial scale.
James Bide-Thomas, mitigating for Ali, said: “He’s only been in the UK since November last year and was at the premises for two months when the operation was already under way.
“He was smuggled here illegally and owed a large debt. He was working, as a gardener, to pay it off.
“He accepts knowing the shotgun was there, provided by others, but when the opportunity was there to use it (during the ram-raid attempt) he chose not to make use of it and instead ran away.”
Katya Saudek, mitigating for Islami, said he came to the UK to earn money to pay for his ailing daughter’s medical treatment, initially by working in construction, but due to Covid the work ceased and “in desperation” he agreed to go to Leicester to tend the plants.
Both men were said to be keen to return to their families in Albania.
Ali was jailed for five years and two months.
Islami was jailed for two-and-ahalf years.
Judge Raynor said they were likely to be deported at the end of their sentences, but in the case of Ali he was recommending the Home Office remove him from the UK.