Crime lord caught in £63m heroin raid

A TURKISH crime lord moved to the UK to set up a heroin smuggling racket after he was kicked out of Germany for international drug trafficking, a court heard.

Fikri Yarasir, 53, had been deported by German government officials after he was jailed for ten years for importing heroin from Turkey into Frankfurt in 1997.

But after his release from prison, Yarasir moved to the Derbyshire town of Glossop, where he set up a pizza takeaway and began a new drugsmuggling operation.

Acting on a tip-off, police followed an HGV from Dover to a warehouse in Salford, where Yarasir was seen unloading the drugs.

Officers raided the premises and found 210kg of heroin, worth about £63 million.

Yarasir was jailed for 25 years in April but details of his background emerged yesterday after the last of his gang was jailed.

Sentencing, Judge Martin Walsh said: “There must have been others… who remain undetected and who were involved in the carefully planned and executed scheme of importation.”