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A Bradford crime boss has been jailed for life after kidnapping, torturing and murdering his uncle and peddling tonnes of Class A drugs

Investigations by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and West Yorkshire Police led to Tahir Syed, 42, being found guilty on all counts following a five-week trial. 

And on 13 June a judge at Leeds Crown Court sentenced him to serve a minimum of 34 years behind bars.

Presenting at the sentencing hearing, the Crown stated it estimates Syed and his co-conspirators imported five tonnes of cocaine and heroin, with a wholesale value of £125 million.

Much of the damming evidence heard at trial was obtained through Operation Venetic – the NCA-led UK response to the takedown of the encrypted communications platform EncroChat.

It revealed Syed's organised crime group imported tonnes of cocaine and heroin to the UK in more than 30 shipments from 2016 to 2021.

Consignments of up to 200 kilos were smuggled in on each occasion hidden among frozen chicken inside lorries.

Each time the drugs would be delivered from the Netherlands to a store in Bradford rented by Syed.

The chicken was used for the sole purpose of covering the drug imports. It would be disposed of and, on one occasion, abandoned entirely in a store used by the organised crime group.

By the summer of 2019, Syed's criminal underlings were under NCA surveillance.

On 17 September 2019 his right-hand man Yusuf Kara, 36, was observed moving heavy bags between vehicles alongside Imran Khan Ashraf, also 36, in Bradford.

Ashraf was stopped and arrested in Bolton, and a vacuum-packed bag containing just shy of £130,000 was found hidden inside his vehicle. The cash was seized along with four mobile phones.

Kara was arrested later the same afternoon in Bradford by West Yorkshire Police officers, who seized two mobile phones from him.

Meanwhile, NCA officers searched his home address and discovered 51 kilos of heroin.

As the news of Kara's arrest reached Syed, he set about fleeing the UK, knowing the contents of his lieutenant's phones would implicate him as the crime group's kingpin. 

He swiftly swapped his luxury cars – a Mercedes GLE and a Nissan GTR – for two watches valued at £63,000 and £40,000 respectively.

And two days after Kara's arrest, on 19 September 2019, Syed left the UK.

Photos found on Kara's phone included invoices for consignment shipments and large quantities of cash, as well as snaps of Syed driving a forklift truck used to offload drug deliveries. 

Syed returned to West Yorkshire briefly two months later, as he believed his uncle Asghar Badshah, a Bradford bus driver aged 39 at the time, had stolen money from him.

He arranged and paid for Asghar Badshah to undertake a polygraph examination – commonly referred to as a lie detector test – in an attempt to find out if he had stolen the money.

Once Syed was told his uncle had failed the lie detector test, he hatched a plan to kidnap and interrogate him with the support of his accomplice Qaisar Shah, 40.

Asghar Badshah was kidnapped by Syed, Shah and three men from Surrey on the night of 29 November 2019 and taken to a disused vault inside a former branch of Yorkshire Bank.

Once there he was tortured through the night as Syed attempted to extract information about the missing money.

Asghar Badshah died as a result of the prolonged attack at the hands of his nephew and Shah.

A post-mortem examination found he was struck with a blunt object at least 48 times on his head, neck, torso, and all four limbs.

Asghar Badshah was reported missing by his family and a sustained West Yorkshire Police search led to the discovery of his body on 29 December 2019 – a month after his kidnapping.   

His body was found wrapped in a cloth and hidden on a shelving unit inside the vault. A false wall had also been built on the staircase leading down to the vault in a bid to prevent the body being discovered.

Syed then left the UK again on 5 December 2019, having returned for less than a fortnight, and travelled from Albania to Kosovo, and then onto Turkey using a false North Macedonian passport.

While overseas he continued to run his drug trafficking empire, and his crime group arranged for huge shipments of up to 200 kilos of cocaine and heroin to be smuggled into the UK.

Some of the shipments were seized by law enforcement, including 155 kilos of cocaine seized by the Dutch authorities in August 2020.

Syed was arrested in Turkey on 11 November 2021 following a global manhunt, and after fighting extradition for two years, was brought back to the UK to stand trial. 

Nigel Coles, NCA senior investigating officer, said: "We have successfully prosecuted and gained significant custodial sentences against individuals at every level of this crime group, dismantling Syed's large-scale international operation from top to bottom.

"And justice has now been served to one of Britain's biggest crime bosses.

"This result is a culmination of extensive investigations led by teams here at the NCA and at West Yorkshire Police.

"I hope Syed's conviction provides some sense of justice to the family of Asghar Badshah, who sadly had his life taken by a man who would stop at nothing to protect his criminal empire."

Detective Chief Superintendent Heather Whoriskey, West Yorkshire Police senior investigating officer, said: "Syed kidnapped, tortured and murdered his own Uncle for information as he believed that Asghar had stolen money from him.

"This perceived debt was about more than just money, it was about Syed's reputation and role as an international drug trafficker.

"Syed was a professional criminal who would import and distribute huge amounts of cocaine and heroin.

"Shortly after the murder Syed fled the country and continued to traffic drugs across the continent.

"Today's sentence is the culmination of years of hard work. We would like to thank our partners at the National Crime Agency for assisting us in bringing Syed back to this country to face his crimes.

"This has been a lengthy and trying ordeal for the family of Asghar Badshah. They have been courageous, patient and brave throughout the whole process. Although today's sentence will never bring him back, I hope it gives his family some comfort and closure knowing that the man responsible for his death has been sentenced for his murder."