Manchester Evening News

‘LITTLE MISS ATTITUDE’ JAILED OVER DRUGS RACKET

GANGSTER’S MOLL HELPED MASTERMIND OPERATION

- By SOPHIE WALKER

A GANGSTER’S moll nicknamed ‘Little Miss Attitude’ has been jailed for five years after she helped mastermind a county lines drugs racket which forced children to traffic cocaine and heroin.

Naliah Noreen, 23, was detained following a major police operation after a teenage boy was used as a ‘runner’ for her narcotics gang, which had up to 1,200 customers.

Mum-of-one Noreen and her two brothers ran five drug hotlines, which made or fielded 54,000 calls over a fourmonth period.

She would help coerce the lad into dealing drugs after claiming he owed the gang money.

The terrified boy was told dealing drugs would pay off his ‘debts,’ and Noreen and her relatives would drive the teenager around housing estates near his home in Rochdale so he could make door-to-door deliveries of heroin.

Noreen – known among addicts as the ‘woman with the really arrogant, bad attitude’ – also travelled to Lancashire and Staffordsh­ire to collect large hauls of dirty money on behalf of her boyfriend.

Police arrested her in August 2018 during a series of raids after officers learned of the unnamed lad’s ordeal.

During interview she told officers: “Better get me the f*** out of here or I’m going to kick off.”

The boy is now receiving help from specially-trained police officers.

At Minshull Street Crown Court, Noreen, from Rochdale, admitted conspiracy to supply cocaine and heroin, plus a separate charge of money laundering.

Her brothers Asad Ali, 19, and Ratib Ali, 20, and their housemate Janaid Rehman, 18, were jailed at earlier hearings. Her boyfriend Mohammed Abu Khan, 28, is currently serving a sevenand-a-half year sentence.

The court heard Noreen came to the attention of police in November 2017 after she was assigned by Khan to meet the gang’s distributo­rs in Nelson and Stoke to pick up drugs money.

Officers kept her under surveillan­ce and during a rendezvous in Audley in February 2018 was seen collecting a Tesco carrier bag containing £26,890 from a dealer in a VW Golf.

She was subsequent­ly stopped on the M6 northbound near junction 20 and arrested, but she was freed under investigat­ion after she told cops she had been asked by Khan to collect money, which she thought was the repayment of a loan.

In the meantime, she and three other members of her family became involved in running five drug hotlines Rocky, Tyson, Woody, Kez and Doctor.

Her lawyer Gemma Maxwell said in mitigation: “Her conduct was born out of personal circumstan­ces and she was very much under the direction of her boyfriend at the time.

“She instructs me quite passionate­ly that she did not directly recruit that child.

“She’s got a child of her own and looks back at what happened with disgust.”

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 ??  ?? Naliah Noreen and, inset, Mohammed Abu Khan
Naliah Noreen and, inset, Mohammed Abu Khan

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