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Gang in £25,000 drugs sting tried to sell police bars of soap
‘Buy bust’ operation in hotel the result of months of surveillance
A GANG arrested in a £25,000 “buy bust” drugs sting in a Euston hotel room face jail despite the fact that the kilo of “cocaine” they sold to undercover officers turned out to be 14 bars of soap.
Kenadid Osman, 18, Adil Osman, 20, and Ahmed Sadique Ahmed, 19, were due to be sentenced at Blackfriars Crown Court today (Thursday) after pleading guilty to being concerned with the supply of heroin or cocaine.
Mohammed Shire, 19, also faces jail for selling heroin and cocaine to undercover detectives in housing estates in Camden Town and Belsize Park.
The four were among 14 Camden teenagers, many known gang members, swept up in undercover operation “Penang” last summer.
Yesterday (Wednesday) the court heard how Adil Osman, calling himself “Top Man”, had offered to supply up to 10 kilos of cocaine after a series of minor street deals to police officers posing as addicts.
He and Kenadid Osman arrived at room 447 of the Premier Inn in Euston Road last October with a rucksack containing packages of white powder, while outside in the car park Ahmed Sadique Ahmed counted £25,000 in cash brought by undercover police to “buy” a kilo of cocaine.
Prosecutor Mark Wyeth said: “The package weighed 1.44 kilograms. In fact it was 14 bars of soap with just 0.88 grammes of cocaine in the package. The stingers were, in fact, the stung.”
But the deal in the Premier Inn was only the culmination of what Mr Wyeth called “a police undercover operation in the summer of 2008 with the object of curbing street dealing of class A drugs in Camden... Undercover officers were wired for sound and they had covert cameras”.
Between July and October, police had made a series of drug buys, including several from Mohammed Shire, who sold heroin and cocaine in the Mayford estate, Oakley Square, and the Chalcot estate in Adelaide Road using the street name “Freddie”.
Undercover officers codenamed John and James posed as addicts to phone him on his mobile and arrange deals which were then caught on camera.
The largest deal was for an ounce of cocaine, worth £200.
Adil Osman was also pictured selling drugs and pleaded guilty to two deals on top of the Premier Inn bust.
But the authorities dropped 10 other charges against him when his family produced plane tickets proving he had spent much of the summer in Canada and could not have been on Camden’s drug dealing “frontline”.
The four all had records for drugs offences and Asbos, which they had repeatedly breached, the court heard.
Mohammed Shire, of Camden Park Road, Kenadid Osman, of Juniper Crescent, Adil Osman, of Adelaide Road, and Ahmed Sadique Ahmed, of Crowndale Road, pleaded guilty in February to either possession with intent to supply or being concerned in the supply of class A drugs. |
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