Full story of how gang raided £100k Oxford cannabis factory

Minutes earlier, a Birmingham gang had stormed a semi on quiet Tawney Street in east Oxford – going through the door with such force that they tore it from its hinges.

The semi was no ordinary home. Formerly student digs, it had been converted into a commercial-scale cannabis factory capable of churning out tens of thousands of pounds-worth of drugs.

From across the street, a neighbour’s CCTV-enabled door bell picked up shouts of ‘bat him, bat him’ as the thugs confronted a  stooge hired to tend to the marijuana plants inside.

The raid was over in minutes. Two cars got clean away, disappearing back up to Birmingham. Two of the raiders were left behind at the scene, while five men in a third car were brought to a stop by police.

The story ended at Oxford Crown Court last week, when six of the men were jailed for a total of more than a dozen years for their parts in the conspiracy to obtain the cannabis.

This is what happened.

The party that never was

On November 22 last year, 25-year-old Umar Jahangir was in a funk. His girlfriend was in Pakistan. The relationship was not going well.

He was driving around Birmingham with pal Inaam Hussain, 19, and Mohammed Aziz, also 19 and described by his barrister as ‘easily led’.

The men, who were in Birmingham suburb Adcocks Green to buy food, saw another friend Adil Iqbal.

The 23-year-old phoned some people he knew ‘in order to buy cannabis’, Hussain told jurors at the trial where he was ultimately acquitted of conspiracy to possess cannabis with intent to supply it.

The group went to a garage, where Iqbal went over to a black Mercedes then invited the rest of his friends over to the saloon car.

There was talk of attending a student party in Oxford – despite it being the height of the November lockdown.

Jahangir told the jury that he hadn’t wanted to go to the party, as he was having relationship problems and he was depressed.

He claimed not to have known about the plan to break into the cannabis factory. Nor did he see a Vauxhall SUV driving with them in convoy.

Aziz, Hussain and Jahangir outside Oxford Crown Court during the trial

As they waited in the car, Iqbal smoked a joint. Taking cannabis ‘gave him a headache’, he told jurors, yet he still took it.

Clearly, there was more happening in the background.

Earlier in the day, Aziz was sent a video – he claimed by Iqbal – showing the man prosecutors claimed was the ‘top man’ in the conspiracy, Yarmohammad Alozai, in a cannabis facatory.

He was clutching a knife in one hand and a marijuana plant in the other. The video, which had been shot on Snapchat, had a banner over it that read: “Whoosh the Afghans I’m with fresh off the boat they’ll chop ur hand off for a roley.”

For Shane Hannon the motives were different. A drug addict from his teens, he’d been in and out of prison. But from the mid-2000s he’d managed to get himself clean. The breakdown of a relationship knocked him back again and Hannon, who had problems with his feet, had returned to a life of drugs and petty crime.

Weeks before the raid, he’d been given a mobility vehicle. The Vauxhall Crossland was a normal hire car, with Hannon expected to be driven around by a pal.

In late November he was offered a different kind of deal by his drug supplier. Lend him the car for a night and he’d wipe Hannon’s drug debt and throw in a few extra drugs. Hannon was to come too.

Convoy

After the chaos of the raid, detectives watched hours and hours of traffic camera footage to piece together how the gang reached Oxford.

Working backwards, they were able to trace three cars driving in convoy. A Mercedes C-class saloon, Jahangir’s Seat Ibiza and Hannon’s Vauxhall SUV, which had had its numberplate subtly altered to fool the traffic cameras.

CCTV picked up the convoy of three cars leaving Birmingham at 10.37pm. They drove down the M40, joined the A34 at around 11.22pm and arrived in Oxford around 11.50pm.

The cars circled east Oxford then Jahangir, who was driving the Ibiza, parked up round the corner from Tawney Street.

Smash and grab – then grab some more

The door went in just before midnight. Then all hell broke loose.

The chaos was picked up on a video-enabled doorbell fixed to a house across the street.

One man could be heard shouting ‘bat him, bat him’. Men disappeared into the house and came out with armfuls of cannabis, running to stuff them into the back of the Vauxhall.

Alozai, said by prosecutors to have been the main man in the conspiracy, was clearly visible from his light-coloured coat. A homeowner, watching the footage from her video doorbell thought he was the leader of the group.

Hussain, who said he’d had no idea there was going to be a raid on the farm, stayed in the car. Jahangir told jurors he’d initially been in the car calling his girlfriend on Snapchat, but got out the Seat when he heard shouting. He said he’d refused to let others put cannabis in his car.

The stricken cannabis farmer could be seen emerge from the house clutching his midriff and shouting into a mobile phone in a foreign language. Despite checking hospital A&E departments, police never found the man.

Inside the house, officers found a machete, blood on the floor and a half eaten meal on the kitchen hob.

There were 78 plants left in the house and 44 ‘root balls’, taken as evidence of cannabis plants that had been snatched by the gang.

A police expert said the 44 plants could have given a harvest of 8kg, worth £40,000 on the wholesale market and up to £100,000 on the street.

The left behinds

During his trial, Hannon said he’d refused to drive after the raid he was pushed out of the car and fell onto some cannabis plants on the floor – explaining why he was covered in leaves.

His rented Vauxhall was stolen, he’d bumped into Shahgul Nawab, who was also involved in the raid, and they were both arrested nearby.

The CCTV picked up a cyclist trying to hold on to a large cannabis ‘branch’ left behind in the road. Walton Hornsby, the prosecutor, told jurors it was a ‘slightly comical aspect’ to the raid.

Jahangir’s Seat was stopped round the corner by police. Alozai, Hussain, Aziz, Jahangir and Iqbal were inside, together with scrap cannabis from the raid. One of the PCs who stopped him told jurors that Jahangir said he’d stopped to pick up some mates as there were ‘geezers with big blades’ chasing them.

The other men were never caught.

Cannabis 'branches' left behind in the street in the wake of the raid Picture: CPS

Sentences

‘Organiser’ Yarmohammad Alozai, 28, of William Street, Swindon, pleaded guilty on the day of his trial to conspiracy to possession cannabis with intent to supply it and was jailed for 43 months.

‘Carrier’ Mohammed Aziz, 19, of Abbotsford Road, Birmingham, pleaded guilty to the charge and received 15 months’ imprisonment.

Shane Hannon, 38, of Upper High Street, Wednesbury, was found guilty of the conspiracy in August and received 30 months.

Adil Iqbal, 23, of Douglas Road, Adcocks Green, Birmingham, pleaded guilty at an early stage and was jailed for a year.

‘Driver’ Umar Jahangir, 25, of Tavistock Road, Birmingham, was found guilty of conspiracy and sentenced to 26 months’ imprisonment.

Shahgul Nawab, 21, of Lansdowne Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, admitted the charge and was sentenced to 13 months for the conspiracy and received a further 10 months’ imprisonment for a burglary in Birmingham.

Clockwise from left Nawab, Alozai, Jahangir and Hannon Picture: THAMES VALLEY POLICE

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