The drugmobile
Heroin worth £37m stashed in car shipped from Pakistan
IT might look like a swanky Jaguar but this silver X-Type certainly wasn’t filled with the usual luxury fittings when it arrived in the UK aboard a container ship.
In fact it was a mere shell riddled with secret compartments containing 230kg (36st) of heroin worth £37 million.
Customs officers found the illicit cargo everywhere from the bumpers to the engine after scanning the vehicle with X-ray equipment.
Garage owner Attique Sami, 44, has now been jailed for 19 years after being convicted of conspiring to import and supply the Class A drug from Pakistan.
Two other men were sentenced last year for a total of 39 years for their part in the crime.
National Crime Agency branch commander David Norris said: ‘Sami’s role would have been to recover the drugs concealed within the car.
‘This group had international contacts and planned to import hundreds of kilos of high-purity heroin to the UK in what was quite a remarkable smuggling attempt.’
Paperwork claimed the vehicle, which had no electrics or ignition, was being imported to Felixstowe, Suffolk, in December 2013, for major repairs.
It left the port on a low-loader and was dropped at an address in Dagenham, Essex, where Noman Qureshi, 32, from Bradford, and Israr Khan, 35, from Luton, inspected it. They were arrested later that morning. Border Force officers, who had been tracking the car since it arrived, found a total of 316 packages containing heroin.
The stash was also crammed into the wheel arches, dashboard, central console, spare wheel compartment and rear seating. Sami, of Ilford, Essex, was arrested last February after being linked to a mobile phone the trio used to plan the crime.
Qureshi and Khan were jailed for 21 years and 18 years respectively.
The haul was one of the biggest ever heroin seizures in the UK.