15-year term for boss of a ‘highly organised and dangerous criminal network’

Published: 21 January, 2011
by TERRY MESSENGER

Drugs and gun smuggling gang tracked by police across Europe

AN international drug and gun smuggling ring, orchestrated in Islington, has been broken up by an undercover police operation.

Scotland Yard’s Operation Anner targeted Inan Uckac, from Bingfield Street, Barnsbury, who was suspected of running a crime gang with tentacles across Europe. 

On Monday, Uckac and three accomplices were sentenced to a total of 49 years in jail for drugs and firearms offences at Woolwich Crown Court.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Beyer, said: “This investigation has successfully disrupted a highly organised and dangerous criminal network.”

Operation Anner police recovered drugs worth £2.3million – including heroin, can­nabis and amphetamines – as well as an assault rifle and a Beretta semi-automatic handgun.

Uckac, 38, who pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to supply class B drugs and two counts of possession of a prohibited firearm, was sentenced to 15 years in jail. Fikret Hyuseinov, a 52-year-old Bulgarian lorry driver, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to supply class B drugs and two counts of possession of a prohibited firearm. He was jailed for 15 years. 

Taskin Sarsilmaz, 28, from Germany, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

A fourth man, Akmal Taj, 27, of Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, was jailed for nine years after admitting supplying class A drugs. 

The undercover operation was launched in January 2009 to investigate Turkish national Uckac, who was believ­ed to be using fellow Turks in the European haulage trade to bring drugs and guns into the UK. 

In the summer of that year, police filmed Uckac unloading 19 large cardboard boxes from Sarsilmaz’s lorry and placing them in a white Ford Transit. 

Acting on information from German police, they observed a meeting between Uckac and Hyuseinov at Waltham Abbey on February 5 last year.

Three days later, officers followed Sarsilmaz to Dudley in the West Midlands, where he met Taj, who was subsequently stopped by police and found to be in possession of four kilograms of heroin.

Two weeks after that, German police informed Operation Anner that the network was about to deliver a large consignment to the UK. On February 21, Hyuseinov was stopped at Dover and arrested after his lorry was found to contain an assault rifle, a Beretta semi-automatic handgun, 186 kilograms of cannabis and 12 kilograms of amphetamine paste.

Uckac was arrested at his home in Selkirk House, Bingfield Street, the same day. 

A search of his place of work, ADA Motors in Islington, revealed evidence linking him to the smuggling.