Muammar Al Khadafi

Former government drugs researcher and advisor Mahfooz Ahmed has been jailed for 12 years for his part in an international heroin smuggling operation involving millions of pounds worth of the deadly drug.

Ahmed, 34, previously ran a Department of Health project, and as part of his work had visited numerous schools to caution children about the dangers of drugs.

He had also worked for a charity which visited schools educating on drugs awareness, and had been involved in the researching of drugs use among minority groups in Halifax, a role which it seems he was equipped to bring specialist knowledge to.

In 2005 an accomplice abandoned heroin worth over £1 million in a Halifax street.

Ahmed fled when he realised that he was under police surveillance, fleeing the country and remaining at at large and hunted by police for 5 more years.

Whilst on the run his involvement in the heroin trade continued, leading to him being jailed in his absence by a court in Belgium for his part in the smuggling of £11 million worth of heroin.

The drugs ring with which he was involved was smuggling heroin from Turkey into countries within the EU, including the UK, Belgium, and Holland.

At some point he returned to Britain, eventually being arrested in a car park in Harrow, North London after an undercover operation.

Now, Ahmed has gone from drugs advisor to jailbird after being handed a 12 year sentence at Leeds Crown Court. He had admitted to his involvement in the importation of drugs.

Hieu Nhan Vo, a 34 year old Vietnamese man, has been jailed for 13 months at Bristol Crown Court and will be deported upon finishing his sentence after a drugs raid by police in Weston Super Mare uncovered cannabis worth approximately £500,000.

The drugs raid, carried out by police on June 1, targeted an address on The Boulevard in Weston Super Mare, and turned up a sophisticated cannabis growing operation, complete with lighting equipment and various chemicals.

A second raid at an address on Atlantic Road South uncovered another factory for the cultivation of cannabis. In total, 680 plants were seized.

Hieu Nhan Vo was arrested on the premises of the drugs factory on the Boulevard, and was later found to have entered the UK illegally.

Pc Marc Flavell said of the operation that "This was a significant result in our ongoing campaign to tackle drugs in the town. Many of the plants seized were at a stage where they would have been cropped and bought onto the streets of Weston within the next few weeks causing harm to the wider community. I would like to thank the local community for their continued support and ask anyone who may have information on cannabis cultivation or drug dealing in your area to report it to us."

We'll once again refer readers to the BBC, which in a story giving advice on spotting cannabis factories tells us that one possible sign is "when premises appear unoccupied most of the time but there are people, often of south-east Asian appearance, seen visiting late at night"

Says it all really, there's no mistaking just who it is responsible for putting a lot of drugs on to the streets of Britain.