Taxis, saris and 'WhatsApp for criminals': How the 'Godfather of Oldham' flooded the North with drugs... then left his son to face the music
manchestereveningnews.co.ukIn a sweat shop in remote north west Pakistan, a mobile phone films as rows of men toil away making dresses on ageing sewing machines.
The camera cuts to a package clearly bearing an Oldham address. But this was no ordinary mail order fashion business. The men on the production line are stitching thousands of pounds of heroin, grown just over the border in the poppy fields of Afghanistan, into the linings of saris.
From there it would be smuggled into the UK, via a processing plant at a terraced house on Cambridge Street, Werneth and cut with paracetamol to boost profits.
The man heading up is the racket is former market trader Fazal Hussain, a notorious drugs baron known as the 'Godfather of Oldham'. READ MORE: Reggie and Ronnie Kray's Manchester connection and the Ancoats pub that 'welcomed home a gangster' READ MORE: One Punch Doyle: 'How I took on Paul Massey's firm in Greater Manchester's Door Wars' Hussain, who rose to prominence in the mid 2000s, and his gang thought they were untouchable, their scam undetectable.
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