Tahir Syed used shipments of frozen chicken to smuggle £125 million of cocaine and heroin into the UK – before kidnapping, torturing and murdering his own uncle. Syed, 42, brought in 200 kilos of drugs at a time using trucks driven from the Netherlands to a warehouse he rented in Bradford. The drugs were hidden within sealed boxes of chicken, which were emptied upon arrival and the chicken disposed of. The kingpin turned on his uncle, bus driver Asghar Badshah, in the belief he had stolen money.
Syed was brought down by EncroChat messages found on his associates’ phones, one of which included a picture of Syed offloading drug deliveries using a forklift truck. He was found guilty of murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking after a five-week trial and sentenced to a minimum of 34 years in prison.
By the summer of 2019, Syed’s organization was under surveillance by the National Crime Agency following the hack of EncroChat. Right-hand man Yusuf Kara, 36, and another associate, Imran Khan Ashraf, were seen moving heavy bags between several vehicles in Bradford. Ashraf was stopped and arrested in Bolton, and a vacuum-packed bag containing £130,000 was found hidden inside his vehicle with four mobile phones. Khan was arrested and two phones taken from him along with 51 kilos of heroin that were found at his home. Syed heard of the busts and bolted, knowing that the messages on Kara’s phone would identify him as the gang’s leader.
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Syed asked his uncle to hide a huge stash of dirty money for him, before leaving Britain on September 19, 2019. He later believed his uncle had stolen £600k. Syed hatched a plot to kidnap him. A post-mortem found he was struck with a metal rod 48 times. |
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Syed was arrested in Turkey after a global manhunt. He had made more than 30 major shipments of cocaine and heroin to the UK from 2016 to 2021.
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