Three drug dealers have been jailed after they were caught out by a suspicious police officer in Wales last July.<\/p>\n
Imran Ali, Majidedeen Arif and Daniel Hassan hired a car from the Hertz Depot at Birmingham Airport \u00a0and drove to Swansea when their vehicle was stopped and searched.<\/p>\n
The police found \u00a3400 in cash, six deals of crack cocaine in a pair of shorts worn by Hassan and some pay-as-you-go burner phones containing information about their drug dealing activities.<\/p>\n
Imran Ali, 29, of Westminster Road, Handsworth; Majidedeen Arif, 21, of Conybere Street, Highgate and 18-year-old Hassan, of Grasmere Road, Handsworth, pleaded guilty to being involved in the supply of crack cocaine when they were sentenced at Swindon Crown Court.<\/p>\n
Ali was sentenced to 25 months in prison, Arif to three years in jail while Hassan will spend three years detention in a young offenders’ institution.<\/p>\n
Jim Davis, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that a police community support officer (PCSO) on patrol in the West Cross area of Swansea spotted the suspicious car.<\/p>\n
As the force’s organised crime team rushed to the scene, Ali who was driving, tried to drive away but got stuck in traffic.<\/p>\n
Callum Ross, for Ali, said the defendant’s role had been limited to that of a driver. He said his client had some “vulnerabilities” and that his long-standing addiction to cannabis\u00a0had had “a detrimental effect” on his life.<\/p>\n
He said character references submitted to the court showed Ali was “kind, caring, generous, approachable and goes out of his way to help people”.<\/p>\n
Syed Ahmed, for Arif, said his client had been exploited and intimidated by others and had troubles at home.<\/p>\n
Stuart John, for Hassan, said the defendant was somebody who came from a good family who had run up drug debts after becoming addicted to cannabis \u00a0and the anti-anxiety medication Xanax during the Covid lockdowns<\/p>\n
Judge Geraint Walters told the three defendants they had come to Swansea to sell drugs as part of a county lines gang and had been caught red-handed by a patrolling PCSO who had “smelled a rat” when he saw the hire car.<\/p>\n
He said: “The courts are altogether too familiar with this sorry story: young men who work for an organised crime group in Birmingham who travel to Swansea intent on peddling drugs on the streets of this city.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three drug dealers have been jailed after they were caught out by a suspicious police officer in Wales last July. Imran Ali, Majidedeen Arif and Daniel Hassan hired a car from the Hertz Depot at Birmingham Airport \u00a0and drove to Swansea when their vehicle was stopped and searched. The police found \u00a3400 in cash, six […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}