Dealer operating from prison given longer sentence

A man who ran a multi-million-pound drugs business from his prison cell has had his jail term increased by 17 and a half years.

Mohammed Imran Ali, 35, who previously lived in Maidenhall Road, Luton, was sentenced at Luton Crown Court on Thursday after detectives cracked an encrypted phone system.

Ali used a mobile phone hidden inside his cell at Norwich Prison to message an associate on the outside who had installed the EncroChat messaging system.

Ali was the ringleader of the drugs operation, with one deal involving 32kg of cocaine. He admitted supplying drugs worth more than £3m between March 2020 and August 2021.

EncroChat was widely used by criminals in the belief it was encrypted and entirely secure, but European investigators cracked the system in 2020.

The judge said that by engaging in the supply of drugs, Ali had been "trading in human misery".

​He had been on remand in Norwich Prison for conspiracy to supply cocaine before he was sentenced to eight and a half years for that in 2023.

Gary Hales, from Bedfordshire Police, said: "Ali's nickname, 'Immy', appeared repeatedly across EncroChat data in discussions of deals.

"We know that drugs are at the heart of much of the exploitation and violence we see across Bedfordshire, so by convicting people like Ali who are at the head of these operations we are making the county safer and protecting our communities.

"The length of this sentence, added to his previous sentence, reflects the severity of Ali's offences and his plan to bring in such a significant quantity of drugs. He is an extremely dangerous operator."

Four other men involved in the gang have also been jailed.

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