Dealer behind £1m drug gang busted at his Scarface flat
AN ALBANIAN drug dealer who had a large poster of Scarface on the wall of his flat has been jailed for running a gang which sold cocaine worth more than £1 million.
Edmund Haziri operated an extensive drugs network across the Midlands moving the class A drug into Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire.
The 36-year old, his ten-strong gang, and his younger brother Edward, 34, were arrested in a series of coordinated dawn raids on March 23 last year.
One raid uncovered a huge DIY casino complete with poker and blackjack tables in the basement of a business premises. During another, a sniffer dog found a phone that had been flung out of the window of the home of gang member Alban Krasniqi, in Blackheath Hill, south-east London. It was later unlocked and found to hold the key to part of the group’s county lines operation, known as the “Eddie Line”.
Bodycam footage from the raid shows police searching the flat which had a giant poster of Al Pacino’s villainous character Tony Montana from the 1983 film Scarface by the door.
The gang is thought to have processed 19.8lbs of cocaine, with an estimated street value of £1.1 million, Derby Crown Court heard. Over the past year, members have been jailed for a combined total of 71 years and seven months. The Haziri brothers were each handed 15-year jail sentences while dealer Razvan Manoliu was given a twoyear and eight-month sentence on Nov 17. A final member of the gang, Daniel Stavrat, 29, will be sentenced next month.
Det Insp Kane Martin said: “The Eddie Line was responsible for poisoning our streets with harmful drugs but the gang simply didn’t care about the damage they left behind.
“They reaped the rewards of their crimes, living lavish lifestyles in London and elsewhere, while the cocaine they pumped into the Midlands destroyed families and relationships.”