A major Anglo-Irish drugs ring was smashed after undercover police swooped on a courier carrying nearly £150,000 worth of heroin destined for Ireland, a London court was told yesterday. The ring, allegedly masterminded by a Dubliner, Mr Thomas Mullen, known as "Boxer", smuggled drugs by air from London City Airport to Dublin.
After a lengthy undercover operation involving the Garda and Scotland Yard, Mr Mullen's role was exposed, Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London was told yesterday.
After police arrested Kathrine Brooks, a courier and ex-prostitute, on her way to the airport, they raided her London home and found another four kg of heroin worth £592,000. Brooks said she regularly smuggled heroin for Mr Mullen and his London contact, Rurhan Mustapha, to pay for her cocaine and heroin habit. "When I first met Mustapha I had a heroin habit and was smoking cocaine," she told Mr Graham Blower, prosecuting.
Brooks, who along with Mustapha has already pleaded guilty to playing a part in the conspiracy, was soon asked to pay her drug debts by smuggling heroin. "I had to pay off my debt to Mustapha." She said she met Mr Mullen (26), and Mustapha (48), at her flat and was given instructions to make a trial run to Dublin. On her next trip she took a kilo of heroin and met Mr Mullen in a hotel where he handed over a Sainsbury's bag stuffed with cash. "I met a man who I believe was Mr Mullen who I had seen before at my flat," she said. Mr Blower told the jury that Mustapha rushed to her flat and into the arms of waiting police after her arrest because she had not arrived in Ireland. When arrested, his mobile phone received a barrage of messages from "Irish Tom", allegedly Mr Mullen.
The Garda also linked Mr Mullen to Mustapha when a routine car search unearthed a personal organiser with two nickname references to the "Turk". And a phone belonging to Mr Mullen's girlfriend was also used to make many calls to Mustapha.
Mr Blower asked what was "an unemployed man from southern Ireland doing ringing a butcher's van driver in London who is Turkish and who we know has contacts in the drugs fraternity? "This was a man who was a prime mover in this conspiracy, using a number of smaller people to distance himself from being the man doing the dirty work." Brooks picked Mullen out of an identity parade, Mr Blower said. Mr Mullen, whose last address was Etchingham Court, Finchley, denies conspiring to smuggle heroin between December 1995 and June 1996. The case continues today.