Alleged mastermind of robbery which saw police officer die faces murder charge

The mastermind of an armed robbery which saw a police officer killed and another seriously injured evaded capture for almost 20 years before being extradited from Pakistan, prosecutors have told a jury.

Police constable Sharon Beshenivsky, inset, was killed on November 18 2005 as she and her colleague Pc Teresa Milburn responded to a report of a robbery at Universal Express travel agents in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

Prosecutor Robert Smith KC said the two officers were shot at almost point blank range by one of three men who had just committed the robbery, with the gunman “firing indiscriminately” as he ran away.

Jurors heard that seven men were involved in committing the robbery, all of whom have since been convicted with the exception of Piran Ditta Khan.

Khan, 75, who prosecutors say planned the robbery, flew to Pakistan three months after Pc Beshenivsky’s death and remained at liberty there until he was arrested and detained by Pakistani authorities in January 2020.

Mr Smith said that, before he left the UK for Islamabad, Khan had a “settled business and domestic life in England and Scotland” and was the owner of a fast food outlet in Aberdeen.

Mr Smith said Khan arrived in the UK last April after an extradition request from the British government, and is now on trial charged with murder, two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon.

Mr Smith told jurors that although Khan was not one of the three men who carried out the actual robbery, and did not shoot Pc Beshenivsky, he “was responsible for organising this robbery in the knowledge that loaded firearms were to be carried”.

Jurors heard that during the robbery, Khan “did not leave the safety” of a Mercedes SLK which was being used as a lookout car.

But, Mr Smith said, the men who carried out the robbery “were disposed to use their firearms to kill or to seriously injure anyone who stood in their way ... something of which the defendant would have been well aware”.

Khan denies the charges and the trial continues.