The head of a Turkish drug family responsible for much of the heroin entering Britain has been jailed for 22 years and recommended for deportation

David Pallister:

Armed police surrounded the high-security Woolwich crown court, south-east London, as Abdullah Baybasin, 45, who uses a wheelchair, was sentenced for conspiracy to supply 2.23kg (5.5lbs) of heroin. He was convicted on that charge in a trial earlier this year and later admitted an offence of blackmail - demanding money with menaces.

Baybasin smirked as Judge Gregory Stone QC told him: "Putting it bluntly you set yourself up as a godfather and set about collecting money from Turkish and Kurdish communities in the greater London area. You used the application of violence and threats of violence and fostered a well-founded reputation for serious violence. You ran a protection racket."

It has taken the police five years to bring Baybasin and his gang to justice. The family entered Britain in the mid-1990s. It has since emerged that they may have had official protection as Abdullah's brother Hussein was recruited as an informer by customs for his information about the connections between politics and the heroin trade in Turkey. Hussein, 49, is serving a life sentence in a Dutch jail for drug smuggling, kidnapping and ordering a number of contract killings.

After his conviction Abdullah took over. He has been disabled since the 1980s, when he was shot in a bar in Amsterdam. Last year, while on remand and with a prison sentence on his record for possession of a 9mm pistol, Abdullah was given leave to remain in Britain as an asylum seeker. It is unclear when the customs operation had ministerial approval and customs, now merged with the Inland Revenue, has declined to comment.

The gang operated in the Green Lanes area of Haringey, north London. Gang members were also linked to a series of turf disputes which resulted in up to 25 murders. On one occasion, Baybasin mobsters were involved in a shoot-out across a busy shopping street in north London on a Saturday afternoon.

Six members of the gang were arrested in the heroin case in 2001 but it took painstaking police surveillance of mobile telephone records and private correspondence before Abdullah was arrested. While he was on bail police mounted a second surveillance operation by placing a tiny video recorder in his office. There, they gathered evidence of how he and his gang threatened people with violence if they did not pay their debts - often money loaned at exorbitant interest rates. One man was threatened with castration.

In February 10 members of the gang were jailed at Woolwich for up to 15 years for blackmail, arson and firearms offences.

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